ESA BIC CH Newsletter #52

Newsletter #52

Dear <<First Name>>

Welcome to our entirely new ESA BIC CH newsletter design – we hope you like it! We thought our newsletter could do with a bit of a refresh and here we are.

The highlight of the past weeks without a doubt was the 5th ESA BIC CH Demo Day! What a fabulous party it was and we received such an overwhelming amount of positive feedback – we really are delighted to have been able to hold this event in person and to celebrate with you. Read more about it below.

This week we had all the Midterm Review Meetings with the 10th cohort and all of them successfully jumped over into the second phase of the program. Well done teams SoHHytec, V-Labs, Coactum, MinWaves and Lightly! Keep an eye on our social media channels for pictures of the meetings.

On August 19th we had the next Community Building Event on the topic of Fundraising. Amaël Cohades from incubatee CompPair talked about the 950 kCHF seed round that they closed in March and what they learnt and experienced on that journey. Apart from that we had Philipp Hasler from Emerald Technology Ventures AG and Balz Roth, Roth Consulting GmbH, Business Angel at a round table at which we brought together different perspectives on the topic of fundraising.

If you are keen to become an incubatee of ESA BIC CH you now have the opportunity to apply for the next selection round! The application deadline for this is on October 31st and the 2-pager application is due 4 weeks prior to this date.

TOP 100

ESA BIC CH is excited that so many of our start-ups and alumni made it into the TOP 100 Swiss Startup Award again this year! One of our alumni – 9T Labs even made it into the TOP 3! Congratulations guys! Overall Space was present as never before at the Top 100 this year, with Luc Piguet from ESA BIC CH Alumnus ClearSpace presenting as Newcomer, and Fabian Jordan from Astrocast giving a keynote speech.

Industry Day

Other than that we and some of our start-ups were present with a booth at the ETH Zurich Industry Day on September 8, another in-person event with good opportunities for networking.

5^th ESA BIC CH Demo Day

The jubilee edition of our annual Demo Day was again celebrated in style and at the Impact Hub Kraftwerk Selnau with around 90 people.

The topic of the event was our 5^th anniversary and at the same time the 5 year extension of the ESA BIC CH contract, which was signed earlier this year. Consequently we included some special effects like a glittering shower and some surprises around the number “5”.

The format though was similar as usual – we had the 11 new start-ups that joined us in the course of the year pitch in front of the audience and the 9 start-ups that already pitched previous year with a booth distributed over the venue.

One highlight was the slightly different and inspirational keynote speech by Markus Mooslechner from Terra Mater Studios, which was focusing on storytelling and innovation. A refreshing and indeed inspiring talk.

The key benefit of course is the networking apero that concludes the event, which offers plenty of opportunity for exchange - hence the event lasted longer than anticipated.

ESA BIC CH startup

Coactum

Coactum aims to revolutionize in-space transportation by applying mature and innovative propulsion technologies.

Allowing fast access to orbits, which are otherwise expensive and slow to reach, Coactum plans to offer the space community the opportunity to conduct customized independent missions at a fraction of the cost of existing space programs. From providing earth-orbit changes to unlocking fast and affordable deep space research, expanding the applicability of small satellites by getting to hand-picked orbits which are otherwise difficult to reach.

Starting with small payloads (instruments and nanosatellites), Coactum intends to solve the “last mile“ problem with simple, versatile and customizable in-orbit transportation services.

Coactum settled in Switzerland from abroad, thanks to the vibrant space and start-up ecosystem in our country – and because of ESA BIC CH from what they say ;-)

Learn more about Coactum on their website.

COACTUM.COM

Start-up highlights

Lightly has two new customers: Greenwood Engineering and SBB and got additional funding and support from the prestigious Silicon Valley Y-Combinator accelerator.
Lumiphase came in second at the Venture competition in the ICT vertical.
MicroR, Miraex and alumnus Komp-Act are part of the 10 Venture Leaders Deeptech who will showcase Switzerland’s deeptech expertise and lay the foundation for global growth during their international roadshow.
NematX processed and shipped their largest purchase order so far with a total of 90 parts.
REOR20 was featured in an article in Inside IT.
RigiTechnologies held an on-site demo for Danish healthcare services company Falck.
Synthara and alumnus Cysec are part pf the Venture Leaders Technology Team 2021.
Voliro entered into a partnership with Bouygues Energies and Services to inspect power grids in Europe.
Alumnus Cysec is one of the winners of the Swisscom Startup Challenge 2021 focusing on cyber security.
Alumnus Embotech entered into a partnership with AXYARD, the technology innovation initiative within the Daimler spin-off 1886Ventures thus now offering end-to-end logistics automation solutions for operation in logistics yards, ports, airports.
Alumnus Menhir Photonics successfully sold its products to multiple customers in Europe, USA and Asia, resulting in 300% more revenues since 2020. Read more.

Thank you for reading!

Questions or suggestions?
We are happy to talk to you!

ESA BIC Switzerland
Stampfenbachstrasse 56 • Zurich 8092 • Switzerland

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