Kickstart reports on start-ups and scale-ups in Switzerland

By Robin Amlot

Swiss incubator Kickstart Innovation announced the initiation of several Proofs of Concepts (PoCs) and other partnerships between start-ups, scale-ups and established companies and institutions.

“This year many companies were challenged to change their operating processes and digitalise applications in a very short time. The partnerships established this year indicate that transforming processes early on using digital and other innovative solutions is a competitive advantage. For this purpose, large companies are increasingly interested in collaborating with high-growth start-ups,” said Katka Letzing, Co-Founder and CEO of Kickstart Innovation.

Among the partnerships in the FinTech & InsurTech Vertical:

• Swisscom and decentriq are partnering to build “Confidential Insights”, a web application for running probably anonymous surveys and peer group analyses.
• The City of Zurich and decentriq are exploring specific use cases in order to realize the potential of anonymized data analytics for the city administration.
• During a proof-of concept with Yova, PostFinance will test their client’s interest in sustainable investment solutions offered on the Yova impact investing platform.
• Mobiliar, PostFinance and decentriq will work towards a prototype of a Swiss Data Ecosystem, leveraging the latest advancements of confidential computing.
• Credit Suisse together with decentriq will explore the advantages of confidential computing around open banking, Machine Learning models and data ecosystems.
• MotionsCloud and LAMIE Direkt are in partnership to implement an AI computer vision driven automated pre-inspection of used smartphone insurance in the online purchasing process to evaluate the pre-existing conditions and  improve the quality of the policies as well as else dispute at the point of claims.
• Health insurer Helsana and digital platform provider alumni, Fjuul,entered a commercial partnership to support the Helsana+ loyalty and bonus program.
• Swisscom and alumni FinTechdb entered a commercial partnership, following participation in the Kickstart innovation program in 2018. The goal has been to bring Swisscom’s “Swiss FinTech Startup Map”, that was launched six years ago, to the next level, using FinTechdb’s unique expertise in data digitization and visualization. The fruit of the collaboration can be seen on fintechmap.ch. The Swiss FinTech Startup Map is published on a monthly basis and is recognized today as a valued tool in the Swiss FinTech community. This technology can now be used by other industries to build and publish maps of their ecosystems. A Female Founders Map is one example that will be published in the near future by Impact Hub Zurich and ZHAW that have joined forces for an Innosuisse mandate. FinTechdb and Swisscom are proud to support this initiative, along with new maps that will be published in the near- to mid-future.
• Alumni Veezoo, a Zurich-based ETH spin-off, developed an artificial intelligence based conversational solution, which can analyze large amounts of data, by using the myAnalytics platform, in seconds. In 2016 Veezoo entered a partnership with AXA to develop a sales intelligence solution. This year AXA rolled out Veezoo over 1800 agents all over Switzerland. By  September 2020 Veezoo had over 15’000 queries from AXA employees.

Kickstart is a spin-off of Impact Hub Zurich and was launched in 2015 by digitalswitzerland. It is is one of Europe’s largest zero equity, multi-corporate ecosystem innovation platforms with the goal to accelerate deep tech innovation in Switzerland.