Business shut-downs persist amid rigid VC landscape

For the past 2.5 years, mympact has been helping individuals to make cautious purchasing decisions to reduce their carbon footprint. Its sustainable banking app allows users to track, reduce, and engage with its environmental impact. The app calculates the CO2 emissions of their spending by connecting to their bank account and provides challenges, tips, and sustainable alternatives to foster action. Furthermore, the two-sided platform connects conscious consumers with sustainable brands, creating value for both sides. Over 25,000 sustainable products from over 250 European brands were available through the app. Investors injected CHF 850’000 into the startup while. Over 10,000 users and customers use the app and marketplace.

After conquering the Swiss market, the startup entered Germany with an office in Berlin. This journey was however shortlived as the company has now ceased operations. “We believed that we could turn the big gap between intention and action into a startup that creates value, can capture it, and contributes to the transformation to a more sustainable future”, as stated in its farewell post on LinkedIn. “We built a kickass team….turns out this wasn’t enough. Of course, there are multiple reasons for this but in the end, we didn’t manage to build enough substance for mympact to continue”, the post continued.

Rheiazymes in liquidation
Biotech startup Rheiazymes and the YARN-TO-YARN® project are currently in the liquidation process. Founded in 2022, the startup was on the mission to make non-recyclable or hard-to-recycle such as textiles, electronics, and compound packaging recyclable using molecular recycling. This approach ensures precise separation of blended materials and allows for materials to become infinitely circular with a positive environmental impact. The first industry application was Yarn-to-yarn aimed at closing the recycling gap for synthetic yarn blends and functional textiles. This project was entering the pilot phase but will cease due to insufficient financial resources.

“Despite the tireless efforts of our team and the tremendous support of our investors and our funding partner, the Migros-Pionierfonds, we find ourselves at a crossroads where we lack the necessary funding to move forward with our vision. The significantly longer development process for scaling the technology made it impossible for the company to obtain the necessary financing. We have not taken this decision lightly but with the utmost consideration for our stakeholders and the future of enzymatic recycling.”

Bitsaboutme closes down
BitsaboutMe, the Bern-based company at the forefront of data ownership, has officially ceased operations today. “This decision comes at a time when our mission - empowering users to take control of their data - has never been more crucial, especially with the rapid advancements in generative AI”, states the 2017-founded company. Its mobile app helps users control and monetize their personal data while tracking their purchases and carbon footprint. Users could earn money by sharing their anonymized purchase data with BitsaboutMe for market research purposes and receive a 1% cashback on purchases when data is shared. Most recently, the company partnered with Consumer Panel Services GfK, offering it a strong foothold in Switzerland and Germany. Through this partnership, CPS GfK would provide its clients with deeper analyses of specific target groups or personas as well as a more detailed view of specific insights, such as information about retailers or brand ratings.

(RAN)
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