July 2, 2021
Fintech start-ups deliver at last
Dear reader
Although the number of exits in Switzerland is slowly increasing and the buyers are often well-known foreign companies, exits in the three-digit million range are still rare. In this respect, it is remarkable that the Deutsche Börse Group is spending an amount in that mid range to acquire a two-thirds majority in Crypto Finance – in addition, the Swiss start-up was founded only four years ago.
A second company from the fintech sector, Imburse, was able to close a financing round of CHF 12 million this week. Its international investor consortium is more than impressive, with US donors, Swiss flagship VC Lakestar and other Swiss and corporate VCs, including PostFinance. Speaking of which, Swiss Post ensured another exit with its acquisition of Livesystems, a pioneer of digital out-of-home advertising.
And a third fintech, challenger bank neon, carried out a crowd investing campaign among its customers, which was very successful. On Monday morning, customers acquired tokenised non-voting shares worth CHF 5 million in less than an hour.
This shows that tokenisation could provide an impetus to crowd investing in Switzerland. So far, only a relatively small number of start-ups have been successful with this sort of campaign. According to the latest crowdfunding monitor from Lucerne University of Applied Sciences and Arts, there was even a decline in this financing option last year.
On the other hand, things are moving forward with business angels in Switzerland. The latest investment report from business angel club SICTIC shows strong growth not only in the number of members, but also in the number of financing rounds in which SICTIC angels were involved. In 2020, it was up 57% on the previous year with 80 rounds. Start-ups from the fintech sector were also the most popular among angels.
In addition to fintechs, deeptech start-ups in particular concluded financing rounds this week. ClearSpace – the start-up is developing a robotic rubbish collector for satellite scrap – received CHF 4 million, and biotech start-up Acthera Therapeutics raised CHF 5.4 million in a seed financing round.
The registration period for the Swisscom Startup Challenge expires on Sunday. The application deadlines for Basel Area’s i4Challenge, Switzerland Innovation’s Tech4Impact programme, the Ticino Boldbrain Challenge and Venturelab’s Venture Leaders Technology run until mid-July.
A start-up programme from mechanical engineering group Bühler has just been launched – find out more about it in our article. Innosuisse’s Scale-up Coaching programme is taking place for the second time, with applications open until 23 July.
Have a nice weekend – and Hopp Schwiiz!
Stefan Kyora
Editor in Chief, Startupticker.ch
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The new Swiss Venture Capital Report was published on 26 January. It analyses 304 financing rounds closed in 2020 and includes further article such as an interview with Michael Hengartner, President of the ETH Board, and a list of Swiss "soonicorns". 
