Startups developing an AI sewing pattern software, automation for legal workflow, an alternative to blood donor platelet transfusions, recycling lithium-ion car batteries, and making credit risk evaluation simple each win CHF 10,000

BeWear: AI sewing pattern software for customized fashion
Every country and every brand has different size systems and standard sizes cannot be scaled arbitrarily. Also, pattern shapes are scaled according to certain principles. However, these two-dimensional measurements do not take into account the curvatures of the human body. Dr. Frauke Link and Verena Ziegler from the Zurich University of the Arts (ZHdK) are the creative heads and founders of the idea to think fashion from the perspective of the individual body. Rather than adapting individual bodies to standardized norms and rules, the project explores individuality, identity and the arising of a new transient generation. BeWear offers the first bespoke AI sewing pattern technology as a B to B white label solution for online retailers to customise their fashion collections via 3D body scan. They provide decentralised on-demand customisation to automate and configure fashion through the patented AI sewing pattern software. The company fosters a sustainable, eco-friendly fashion industry through on-demand automation and production of bespoke AI fashion without stocks, less waste and less production costs. By integrating the BeWear software, the team expect a long-term reduction of online returns by 50%, 12 billion tons less waste production, 150 billion Euro production cost savings and a reduction of 120 million tons CO2 equivalent emissions worldwide. The Venutre Kick funds will be used to consolidate the proof of concept phase by recruting experts in web-development, IT and marketing, and to contact potential investors. bewear.ch

Deepjudge: AI driven automation for legal workflow
Legal data is predestined for AI: full of underlying laws ready to be uncovered by learning algorithms. With 20+ years of combined experience with state-of-the-art deep learning, the four founders Florian Schmidt, Paulina Grnarova, Yannic Kilcher, Kevin Roth, and advisors Thomas Hofmann and Elliott Ash have an unparalleled set of skills to push the boundary of context-aware legal language processing. Together they work on DeepJudge that shapes the future of the legal profession through a revolutionary technique for understanding and processing legal documents. With such document understanding technology at the heart of their platform, they bring the next-generation legal services that automate repetitive tasks for lawyers and help them achieve faster and higher quality outcomes: from anonymization of text and information extraction to legal semantic research. They plan to incorporate the company and transition all four founders to full-time positions. Within the following six months the milestone is to turn their prototype into a product through active conversations with lawyers, as well as improvements on the front-end (interface) and back-end (AI and scalability). Then, they plan to already work with customers for which they are already in active conversations. The Venutre Kick funds will be used for compute power as well as salaries of everyone in the company. deepjudge.ai

HemostOD: Standardized alternative to blood donor platelet transfusions
Platelet transfusion, whose source is currently only blood donation, is a life-saving product for patients with low platelet counts but it has many drawbacks: it is a non-standardized product, thus impacting efficacy, with threat of bacterial/viral contamination and facing recurrent shortage issues and costly complications of alloimmunization. The four co-founders CEO Faouzi Khechana, Head of engineering Elodie Dahan, COO Sophie Claudel, Scientific Director Dominique Baruch , along with Advisory Board Member Michel Prudent work together on HemostOD's project with the ambition to develop donor-free, stem cell-derived, ex vivo platelets as a standardized alternative to blood donor platelet transfusions. HemostOD have shown the fabrication of ex vivo platelets in flow with an improved yield and process efficacy compared to competitors and confirmed its platelets functionality through preliminary preclinical test and characterization. The company is now focusing on the scale up of the technology and on the acquisition of his proprietary cell line. The Venture Kick fund will be used for market access study. hemostod.com

LIBREC: Safe collection and recycling of e-car batteries with full recovery of cobalt, nickel, lithium and manganese
Car importers are obliged by law to take back and dispose spent lithium-ion car batteries from hybrid, plug-in hybrid, battery electric or fuel-cell electric cars. Transportation of such batteries is costly and can be dangerous. LIBREC’s proposal to collect old cars and pick-up spent batteries safely, as well as to repair, up-cycle or re-cycle the batteries entirely in one location comes with a strong cost advantage and is preferred by Swiss car importers. Co-founder and CEO Jodok Reinhardt, energy/utility expert André Schwaninger and recycling engineer Denis Werner are setting up the system with auto schweiz and innovate the recycling technology with BFH, Prof. Axel Fuerst to full recovery of all materials. No more mining, no more long-distance transportation and no more smelting or landfill of old batteries are needed.
The Venture Kick funds will help them get framework agreements with auto schweiz and car importers, set-up safe transportation, and finalize the recycling process.

Ratyng: making credit risk evaluation simple
For most businesses, getting a loan from a bank will never be fun, but that does not mean that the process needs to be as cumbersome and intransparent as it is today. According to a study by HSLU and SECO (2017), 8% of all Swiss SMEs could use a bank loan, but never even apply for one, just based on their expectation that they won’t be eligible for one. Ratyng’s team, composed of Volker Haushalter and Matthias Schaller offer the financial industry the opportunity to benefit from highly efficient & accessible SME risk assessment through our highly innovative rating model. Our risk assessment is highly efficient, since it automates & digitizes the manual risk evaluation in banks, significantly reducing costs & time required. At the same time, this increase in efficiency allows Ratyng to take credit ratings to other financial services companies that are - to date - not able to build up this expertise themselves. This, in turn, allows these companies to improve their pricing and reduce losses. Their engine is fully developed and they are going live with their first customer in December 2020. The Venture Kick funds will be used to further develop the user experience and especially to improve how data is entered into the system. ratyng.com