Startups developing augmented reality based safety systems for motorcycles, next-gen probiotics, neuromodulation therapies, automated reporting in medicine, and energy storage systems each win CHF 10,000

Aegis Rider, Arkaïya, Bottneuro, Celerato, and voltWALL win Venture Kick's first stage of financial and entrepreneurial support. Their projects develop a cutting edge augmented reality based safety system for motorcycles; produce a pioneer probiotic ingredient that promotes protection against a range of diseases and optimizes metabolism; provide neuromodulation therapies for Alzheimer's disease; offer an efficient all-in-one solution for creating structured reports, consisting of a comprehensive and intuitive software; and offer solutions with far greater flexibility in either stationary or mobile energy storage applications.

Aegis Rider: augmented reality based safety systems for motorcycles

Powered Two-Wheelers (PTWs) such as motorcycles, e-bikes and e-scooters carry an increased risk of injury for their riders compared to other forms of mobility. For example, per mile driven in 2017, the number of deaths on motorcycles in the U.S. was nearly 27 times higher than the number of deaths in cars. With the emergence of Advanced Driving Assistance Systems (ADAS) for cars, fatal accidents have been reduced by almost 30% in the last 20 years. However, PTWs have not benefitted equally from these technological developments, in fact over the same time span, deaths per 100 million miles driven have instead increased by almost 10%. Consequently, Aegis Rider estimates an almost 10 year lag between ADAS for cars vs. motorcycles and aims to change that. Their goal is to make riding PTWs, such as motorcycle and e-bikes, safer and their system can help reduce accidents and fatalities while providing a new user experience. They will achieve this by combining state of the art technology from the fields of machine learning, digital map processing and augmented reality visualization. This will allow them to develop an augmented reality based safety system that provides a virtual overlay to the rider, visualizing the safest trajectory, risky scenarios and infotainment such as navigation. Their safety system also enables a general risk quantification of the environment and of the individual rider. To achieve these goals, Aegis Rider's team is composed of Dr. Simon Hecker, PhD at the Computer Vision Lab (CVL) at ETH Zurich, scientist and entrepreneur previously working on autonomous driving, Timon Gentzsch, MSc in mechanical engineering from RWTH Aachen, working on hardware design and system integration and Nicolas Zobernig, MSc in electrical engineering from ETH Zurich working on augmented reality. The team is supported by Dr. Alexander Liniger, PhD at ETH Zurich on optimal control for autonomous race cars, Prof. Luc Van Gool, head of CVL and Prof. Tomas Brenner head of the ieLab at ETH Zurich. In 2020 around 41.5 million motorcycle units were sold globally with a volume of $108 billion. From that they estimate 12 million premium motorcycles to which their safety system is applicable. The first stage of Venture Kick financing will be used to build several prototypes to be used in a pilot project this summer. Aegis Rider will assess their system with several interested test riders that can register on their website. This will help the team improve and refine their product. aegisrider.com

Arkaïya: the future of probiotics

270 million courses of antibiotics are prescribed per year in US, of which 10% are affected by antibiotic associated disease (AAD). Antibiotic associated disease results from disturbance of the gut microbiota and immune system. Probiotics (healthy gut bacteria) have been developed to help treat antibiotic associated disease, but such probiotic solutions are usually eliminated by the antibiotics during the treatment. There is a need for effective probiotic that can be co-delivered with antibiotic to help reduce antibiotic-associated disease. Arkaïya is an EPFL spinoff that produces a pioneer probiotic ingredient. The team is composed of CEO/CSO Dr. Duncan Sutherland, Immunologist, inventor and entrepreneur, Head of production Dr. Manfred Zinn, Professor of Biotechnology (fermentation), Head of product quality Dr. Horst Pick, Professor of Pharma-analytics, CMO and Head of Market analysis Domenico Dia, EPFL eMBA, and Advisor Dr. John Darbyshire, consultant (former head of Nestle R&D and global operations). The US$3.56 billion probiotic ingredient market, today, derives primarily from lactobacillus, bifidobacteria and Saccharomyces Boulardii yeast. EPFL researchers have identified a new category of probiotic ingredient called ARCHAEA with high therapeutic value, numerous key competitive advantages and market share potential similar to the lactobacillus category (>$1 billion). This is a new field in which EPFL/Arkaïya has been granted strategic patents on the use of archaea in food for the improvement of human health. Arkaïya is thus in a unique position to dominate the fast growing archaea probiotic market category. They will use the Venture Kick funds for marketing material, consulting fees, and trademark and IP fees. arkaiya.com

Bottneuro: neuromodulation therapies for Alzheimer's disease None of the pharmacological treatments available today slow or stop the progress of Alzheimer's disease (AD). There is an urgent need for the development of a safe, non-addictive, non-opioid-based neuromodulation therapy, affecting more than 10 million new patients every year. Bottneuro's core team, composed of CEO Dr. Bekim Osmani, Nanotechnology, CTO Alois Hopf, Cell Biology, CSO Dr. Tino Töpper, thin-film expert and Prof. Dr. Raphael Guzman, Clinical Expert, Neurosurgery, are developing ultra-thin implants for electrical stimulation of the brain. Manufactured from plant-based starting materials, these become soft when inserted into the body and can deliver active substances in a targeted manner. Their patented NENI® thin-film technology enables the fabrication of dense electrode arrays, allowing spatially precise electrical stimulation of neurons and glial cells, which play a prominent role in neurodegenerative diseases such as AD, significantly reducing patient distress. The team can fall back on several years of experience in polymer nanotechnology, biomaterials, neurosurgery, neuromodulation and management. Besides the physical and mental burden on the patient and family members, AD patients generate yearly costs of > CHF 10 billion in Switzerland. Similar numbers are found in Germany with > EUR 30 billion invoiced by healthcare providers. The Venture Kick funds will be used for consulting fees and the preparation of an IP roadmap. bottneuro.ch.

Celerato: Giving structure to medical reporting

With the continuous progress in medical science, keeping up with everchanging medical guidelines and coding systems is both a nuisance and a challenge for physicians. In addition, most medical reports are still written in plain text nowadays, making it impossible to directly access the data for automatic billing, further processing and research. Celerato tackles these problems by providing access to a user-friendly structured reporting software as well as a variety of multilingual web forms that efficiently guide pathologists through the creation of standardized reports. The software was originally developed within the PathoLink project supported by the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNF) in collaboration of four institutes (Centre hospitalier universitaire vaudois (CHUV), University Hospital Basel (USB), University Bern (UNIBE) and the University of Zurich (UZH)). In 2020 alone, physicians of those institutes created more than 10’000 reports using Celerato's SynReport software. The team of Celerato, consisting of Samuel Merki (CEO and software development), Claudio Molina (QM and form development) and Norbert Wey (Sales and administration) has several years of experience in the MedTech sector and has already successfully implemented multiple projects. The Venture Kick funds will be used to develop additional forms and to further test a cloud solution of the software developed for small pathology institutes. Additionally, an improvement in terms of web appearance, an extension of the interfaces and development of new interfaces for other pathology information systems are planned. celerato.ch

voltWALL: energy storage systems

The sun shines only during the day while most of us require electricity at night, which is a major issue for photovoltaic (PV) panels owners as they are still dependent on utility providers. For this reason, stability of clean electricity requires environmentally friendly Energy Storage Systems (ESS). PV installers indicated that current solutions are heavy, rendering them difficult to install, reducing profitability and creating the same problem when they require replacing due to breakdown. Also, most ESS are single phase units, not compatible with most Swiss and German residences. To address this issue, voltWALL's team CEO, CTO Aldo Grech, Software Architecture/Engineering Lakshmi Vasudevan, Computational Design/ 3D Modelling Milica Cizmic Lebar, CFO Calogero Amato, CCO Giorgia Pati, and Business Developer Andrea Padoan are working together on voltWALL’s core product: An advanced, user friendly, multi-application energy storage module called ‘xBlade’, that offers solutions with far greater flexibility in either stationary or mobile energy storage applications. The innovation provides clean, affordable, transportable and secure energy. The xBlade is based on lithium cells providing modularity for each solution that voltWALL offers to the market. Each module is individually monitored so that any breakdowns in the field are preempted and replacement modules are sent and installed. voltWALL is easier to install and highly customizable. From a safety perspective, being modular and immersion liquid-cooled, “run-away” fire-incident likelihood is further lowered due to lack of oxygen in the module. Battery energy storage system worldwide market is projected to grow to US$12.7 Billion, with a 32.9% CAGR, in the next 5 years. They are finalizing the industrial prototype and start the patenting and certification process. In parallel, they intend to close new partnerships with Ticino and other Swiss installers in order to broaden their initial market coverage. Then, they will set up the factory and start the production to meet the initial demand. Venture Kick funds will be used to complete the final prototype, the patenting and the certification processes as this is the key first phase to reach the go-to-market phase. voltWALL.ch