Kickstart announces 48 new partnerships to drive innovation in Switzerland

Kickstart Innovation, one of Europe’s leading innovation platforms, has announced the initiation of 48 Proofs of Concepts (PoCs) and other partnerships between start-ups, scale-ups and established companies and institutions. Since 2015, a total of over 170 such collaborations have been initiated in the fields of Circular Economy, EdTech & New Work, FinTech & InsurTech, Food & Retail Tech, HealthTech, Smart City & Technology and others, with great success.

“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,” explains Katka Letzing, co-founder and CEO of Kickstart Innovation. These collaborations have gained even more importance if Switzerland is to maintain its innovation engagement on local and global levels.

The Partnerships in the Food & Retail Tech Vertical include:

• The City of Zurich and Prognolite consider to collaborate in a joint PoC to reduce food waste at the City Hospital Triemli (location Triemli).
• Coop and the Singapore-based startup Ai Palette are collaborating to predict trends for the Convenience Food Category.
• Coop and Greendeck will work together to help Coop improve its pricing and promotions. 
• Coop and Boost Biomes, alongside Knup, are working on a research project to test how long Boost’s biofungicide product can extend the shelf-life of strawberries.
• Coop and Alpengummi have scoped a pre-proof of concept to conduct an expert tasting in order to assess the market potential of natural chewing gums.
• In the scope of a pilot project, Coop and Prognolite intend to join forces to reduce food waste and optimise staff planning in the Coop restaurants.
• Vyv and Migros-Industry are evaluating the efficacy of antimicrobial lighting on food production premises.
• Migros-Industry, the farmer’s organization IP Suisse and Boost Biomes are testing a new and innovative biological active ingredient – as a replacement for chemical-synthetic fungicides – in potato cultivation.
• livealytics and the Genossenschaft Migros Zürich are partnering to learn more about shopper behaviour by testing how display set up influences shopping behaviour and experience in a non-food application.
• Migros-Industry is collaborating with iSense, using its flavour mapping capabilities to provide transparency and comparability between flavours used in Migros-Industry.

For more information, visit: kickstart-innovation.com.