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September 13th, 2022

The Swiss Oscars for start-ups

At the 12th edition of the Top 100 Swiss Startup Awards, the most innovative and promising young companies in Switzerland were celebrated. The start-up Yokoy, which specialises in spend management, came out on top.

Every year, the TOP 100 Swiss Startup Award s presents the 100 most innovative and promising Swiss start-ups, selected by a 100-member jury of leading investors and experts. The 12th edition, often referred to as ’The Swiss Oscars for start-ups’, took place last week in front of a selected audience of start-ups, investors and key partners.

Fintech start-up tops this year’s ranking

With Yokoy, a fintech start-up took first place for the first time since the ranking was established. Zurich-based start-up Yokoy was founded in 2019 and uses artificial intelligence to automate processes for corporate spending and corporate credit cards. Together with the runners-up – Planted Foods and Ledgy – the ranking represents the diversity and potential of Swiss start-ups: they have, on average, been set up within the last three and a half years, have already created over 420 new jobs, and have raised a cumulated CHF 153 million.

Winners

First place: Yokoy | Zurich | www.yokoy.ai

Company expenses and credit cards on autopilot

Fintech company Yokoy uses artificial intelligence to automate the entire corporate spend and corporate credit card process. The Zurich-based start-up was founded in 2019 by Melanie Gabriel, Devis Lussi, Thomas Inhelder, Philippe Sahli and Lars Mangelsdorf and was ranked 20th in 2021.

Second place: Planted Foods | Kemptthal (ZH) | www.eatplanted.com

Turning plants into “meat”

Planted Foods revolutionises the food industry by creating plant-based protein made of 100% animal-product-free ingredients. The vegan meat alternatives do not include any additives. Planted Foods was founded in 2019 by Christoph Jenny, Eric Stirnemann, Lukas Böni and Pascal Bieri and ranked 37th in 2020.

Third place: Ledgy | Zurich | www.ledgy.com

Setting equity for growth

Ledgy is an equity management platform that helps start-ups manage their cap table, employee participation plans, funding rounds and investor relations. The ICT start-up was founded in 2017 by ETH Zurich physics graduates Yoko Spirig, Ben-Elias Brandt and Timo Horstschäfer and ranked 13th in 2021.

Strong influence for the Swiss economy

The 512 Swiss deep tech start-ups that have been featured in the TOP 100 ranking over the past 12 years have created 16,149 jobs and raised CHF 11.1 billion. 71 exits and eight IPOs top off the achievements of these innovators.

With a record CHF 2.6 billion in venture capital already invested in start-ups during the first half of the year in Switzerland, it is an Olympic share, and we aim to continue on this track, despite the current crises affecting the global economy.

Stefan Steiner, Programme director

100 experts nominate their favourites

The award ceremony is organised by the Venturelab programme, which aims to promote Swiss start-up talent and to make it ready for investors. A jury of 100 investors and start-up experts selected the 100 most innovative and promising Swiss start-ups. Each jury member nominates ten Swiss start-ups that are less than five years old and show the greatest commercial potential. The first-placed company receives ten points, the second-placed nine, and so on. All these individual scores result in the final ranking.

Who becomes the next unicorn?

In parallel to the TOP 100 award, the best Swiss scale-up companies, which are between 5-10 years old and show the greatest potential to become a unicorn one day, are presented before a renowned jury. Below we present an infographic with the 25 best scale-up companies in 2022: