Top Swiss Startups scale to India through Swissnex

swissnex India, an initiative of the Swiss State Secretariat for Education, Research and Innovation, brings cutting-edge technologies and innovations from top-rated Swiss startups to India. swissnex India coaches these early-stage and growth-stage startups on business pivot strategies, product or service localisation, market understanding and access to few handpicked potential collaborators and customers in India. Additionally, the startups receive a soft landing/launchpad capabilities to launch into the Indian market. Since its inception in 2013, swissnex India has advised over 600 Swiss startups to adapt and then evaluate their business in India through curated conversations with corporates, academia and investors where applicable.

A Swiss delegation comprising startups, academia and investors are in India this week to evaluate various business collaborations with the Indian innovation ecosystem. As part of their healthtech initiatives, swissnex India organised the second edition of their flagship program – the Indo-Swiss Healthtech Week.  The delegation attended BioAsia 2020 in Hyderabad and is scouting the innovation ecosystem in Bangalore. This includes five healthtech startups – Cellestia, Bottmedical, Noul, ARTIDIS and PeriVision.

swissnex envisions to provide the Swiss startups with the right resources, mentorship, market opportunities and connections to foray into the Indian market. Swissnex has a strong partnership with Innosuisse – the Swiss Innovation Agency to create tailor-made market validation and entry for Swiss startups.

“swissnex India is an instrumental and long-standing partner for the Innosuisse internationalisation camps. The number of applications for the camps in India (second highest figure after the camps in the US) showcases the efficiency and the strength of their network. For most of the start-ups, the coaching provided by the swissnex team is the key success factor of their camp”
 - Marcel Hofstetter, Scientific Officer at  Innosuisse – Swiss Innovation Agency

“Having advised several hundred Swiss startups in Indian market, I am convinced that Switzerland offers arguably the best B2B cases for deeptech, research-led and patented innovation to top and willing MNCs. The cases of Mahindra investing in Gamaya, Tata’s collaboration with  Orbiwise, Hitech Robotics joining hands with Bestmile are testimony to this.” - Prateek Khare, Head of Startup Partnerships - swissnex India

swissnex India follows the unique model of helping Swiss startups in India by focusing on three phases of the startups’ journey. It includes training researchers, validating the Indian markets for early-stage Swiss startups and scaling market-ready startups in the Indian markets over a sustained timeline.

How swissnex accelerates the Swiss startups’ journey in India:

• Coaching and contextualisation to help the startups’ market fitment, product/service localisation, cost and pricing strategies, people strategies and balance sheet impact. 
• Catalysing collaborations and curating conversations with relevant Indian partners
• Create visibility via handpicked external platforms such as BioAsia 2020 for digital health startups and Bengaluru Tech Summit for deeptech startups.

Some success stories: 

• Bestmile: swissnex’s tailor-made camp for Inosuisse aided Bestmile to define market entry strategy, identify and enter into a deal with HiTech Robotics India who manufactures self-driving vehicles in India, where Bestmile will supply fleet management solution for onsite deployment.

• Rapyuta Robotics- ETH Zurich spin-off, Rapyuta, tapped into cloud robotics solutions in India’s Silicon Valley, Bengaluru. Presently housing 300+ employees in Bengaluru office for technology development and deployment of autonomous robot communications. 

• Orbiwise- swissnex India was advising Swiss startup Orbiwise when they won the bid for Tata Communications for its LPWA (Low Power Wide Area Network) software, on the grounds of maximum efficiency for deployment. swissnex India was able to contextualise Orbiwise's Indian business model, legal implications and help transition the business setup between Switzerland and India at a swifter pace. Orbiwise now has a small team in Western India and manages nationwide IoT network of Tata in 40 cities and main corridors with IoT device count running in millions. 

• Clemidi: Clemedi develops in-vitro tests to diagnose antibiotic-resistant infections, especially for tuberculosis. Since India accounts for the highest number of drug-resistant TB patients worldwide, their product is highly relevant for the Indian market. Through the first edition of swissnex’s Indo-Swiss Healthtech Week in 2019, Clemedi signed three NDAs and initiated several solid collaborations with prominent players to gain access to samples and offer tests.

“At swissnex, it’s our mission to connect the dots in education research and innovation. We have been instrumental in connecting the University of Basel with WE HUB in Hyderabad and CCAMP and Narayana Health City in Bangalore, to further promote entrepreneurship and knowledge exchange between the ecosystems. All these collaborations translating into official partnerships this week, is a great sign of continued Indo-Swiss ties”, added Sebastien Hug, CEO of swissnex India and Consul General of Switzerland.