Best startups come from the Greater Zurich Area

September 10, 2020

Zurich – The Zurich startups Cutiss, Wingtra and Piavita make up the top three in this year’s TOP 100 Swiss Startup Award. The Zug company Authena was crowned the winner of the public voting.

Venturelab has organized the TOP 100 Swiss Startup Award for the tenth time. Switzerland’s 100 most-innovative and promising startups have been selected by a jury of 100 leading investors and startup experts.

This year, the startups in the top three are all from Zurich. First place went to Cutiss, a spin-off from the University of Zurich (UZH). The life sciences startup has developed personalized skin technology to treat skin defects. Cutiss successfully closed a financing round in the summer, raising 20 million Swiss francs. It is currently working on the completion of the ongoing clinical phase II trials. Cutiss plans to apply for market approval for its artificial skin in 2022.

Second was Wingtra, a spin-off from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich (ETH). The startup is developing a vertical take-off and landing (VTOL) drone for mapping and surveying. These are used in mining, farming and land use planning, for example.

A medtech startup was placed third, Piavita, which has developed a wearable diagnosis device for horses. It is attached around the chest of the horse and allows for high-precision measurements of vital signs. This data is then sent to the cloud server in real time.

The winner of the public voting is the Zug-based startup Authena, another company from the Greater Zurich Area. Authena has developed tracing technology that enables the whole product journey to be tracked from the production site to the consumer. It aims to protect against fraud and counterfeiting.

“The whole world is talking about Covid-19, so being able to celebrate the 10th anniversary of the TOP 100 is something quite special,” said Jordi Montserrat, Managing Partner of Venturelab, in a press release. “While this does of course affect the celebration and our way of life at the moment, the startups presented here this evening are the perfect embodiment of the resilience and potential of Swiss companies.”