March 14, 2025
Understanding customers – leveraging trends
Dear reader
Several scale-ups made the headlines this week. Beekeeper continues to make progress with its B2B all-in-one app for frontline teams, and has secured USD 35 million in growth and working capital from the UK’s HSBC Innovation Banking. Agritech companies Ecorobotix and xFarm announced the next steps in their global expansion: xFarm is entering the Brazilian market with a strong partner, and Ecorobotix has made significant progress in Australia and New Zealand.
Solothurn-based QUMEA has won the largest European digital mobility monitoring tender to date. In future, up to 2,400 beds in Swedish hospitals will be equipped with the AI-supported solution. QUMEA is also one of the finalists in the Swiss Medtech Award, in which scale-ups compete. The other two finalists are bone implant manufacturer Bonebridge and digital health company evismo.
This type of success is possible only with a healthy dose of ambition and a deep understanding of markets and customer requirements. It’s encouraging to see how many scale-ups now possess these qualities. However, Swiss start-ups are also able to use the power of trends in a way previously uncommon – a very useful skill for young start-ups.
This week, we reported on four companies that benefit from the trending topic of AI agents. Fintech Kadoa builds AI agents for unstructured data and has now closed a financing round. Nunu.ai develops AI agents for games and has secured CHF 5.3 million in a seed round. RWAI’s TicketPilot uses agentic AI to automate service, support and maintenance processes, and the company has received CHF 1.5 million from business angels. Legaltech start-up DeepJudge has launched a new product called AI Workflows, a suite of AI agents and applications that provides instant, accurate access to all a firm’s internal data.
Next week, you can meet me and my colleagues Ritah Nyakato and Benjamin Klavins at the Start Summit in St. Gallen. I would also like to point out the deadlines for the Innosuisse Scale-up Coaching on 18 March, the Swiss-Israel Lean Launchpad programme on 23 March, and the EY Entrepreneur of the Year Award on 28 March.
Startup Days, which will take place on 14 May in Bern, has published its programme. Start-ups have until Sunday to apply for the Startup Days Newcomers competition. We still have a few discounted tickets available for the event.
Finally, I would like to draw your attention to a survey conducted by the Swiss Financial Innovation Desk. The Federal Department of Finance wants to determine whether and how the current framework conditions for financial innovation can be effectively improved.
Have a good weekend.
Stefan Kyora
Editor in Chief, Startupticker.ch
News
Upcoming events
Events taking place next week
Upcoming trainings
Trainings with an application deadline next week
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". 
