a unique growth program

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for ambitious swiss startups

The SwissEF UpScaler program continues to attract great interest and is fully booked for the first quarter of 2022. No less than 13 startups are currently in the growth program. The article from Startupticker provides an overview of the participating companies.

Participants are particularly enthusiastic about the high utility value and the quick and positive impact on their business development. All participating startups now receive an exclusive CHF 80,000 funding credit, which can be used for workshops and coaching sessions with our experts and entrepreneurs.

Startup PXL Vision, winner of the Swiss Economic Award 2019 and EY Entrerpreneur of the Year Award 2020, increased its revenue by more than 50% last year and doubled its headcount. PXL Vision has benefited greatly from the Swiss Entrepreneurs Foundation's UpScaler program during this time. CEO Michael Born says: "In eight intensive workshops, we were able to identify our limiting growth factors with experienced entrepreneurs and experts from the SwissEF network and eliminate most of them, which greatly accelerated our growth. I can highly recommend the UpScaler program to all startups that are about to go international."

Recently the UpScaler program was launched with the company Zippsafe. Zippsafe manufactures a novel locker room solution utilizing flexible textile locker bags instead of metal sheet allowing space savings of up to 70% compared to conventional lockers. In order to accelerate the growth of the company, the workshops will focus on sales and distribution. Together with PXL Vision, MyCamper.ch, Dagsmejan and Climeworks, five promising startups are currently completing the SwissEF UpScaler program.

As a result of the Corona-crisis, questions concerning the financing of startups are even more in focus than before. SwissEF has adapted its UpScaler program and now offers a specific financing module. Previous participants included ANYbotics from Zurich.

The internationally leading goods testing group SGS SA, based in Geneva, has joined the SwissEF industrial network. SGS supports the successful internationalisation of growth companies in SwissEF's UpScaler programme. With its entry, the company is adding its international network, with 2,600 locations in over 140 countries and the extensive experience of over 90,000 employees, to help develop the next generation of internationally successful Swiss SMEs and startups.

Following the successful pilot at the end of 2018, the SwissEF UpScaler growth program is now being launched on a broad basis. Growth companies in the internationalisation phase will be supported by a pool of 50 renowned experts and an international industry network. By clicking on the picture you get detailed information, a factsheet and the registration link for interested start-ups.

In order to optimally promote the scale-up of start-ups in Switzerland, EPFL Lausanne, EPFL Innovation Park, Innovaud and SwissEF have joined forces to form the ScaleUp Network Switzerland. The synergies between the individual funding programmes and the respective pools of experts are exploited in a targeted manner, experience is continuously exchanged and start-ups from all over Switzerland are systematically networked in the scale-up phase. The aim of the new cooperation is to accelerate the growth of Swiss start-ups in the internationalisation phase and thereby significantly increase the success rate.

The UpScaler program for growth companies was tested in a pilot project with two Swiss start-ups. Both are in the midst of internationalisation, i.e. exactly in the phase on which the SwissEF UpScaler is focusing. The four-month test phase provided important insights. Thanks to the valuable experience and feedback from the experts and the growth companies, we will intensify the program even further.