This year, the SEIF Tech for Impact Awards Ceremony was successfully held in person after two years of having to attend in front of our screens. We were happy to welcome the jury and the finalists who impressed the audience with their respective innovative solutions. With 286 eligible applications, the number of candidates to the SEIF Tech for Impact Awards 2022 hit a new record and we were happy to see the quality of the applications rising throughout the years.
The 10 finalists were selected among a geographically diverse pool of candidates, with regions such as Southern Europe and the Nordics being on the rise. The founders are dedicated to address the most pressing global challenges of our time in various impact and tech areas. With the high number of applications comes a high degree of competition and it was undoubtedly a difficult choice to select the nominees. The jury and their diverse and thorough expertise played a key role at each step of the selection process.
Thanks to the highly qualified jury and 5-step selection process, the SEIF Awards have been established as a quality label in the impact ecosystem over the past 10 years and the finalists can be very proud to have stood their ground in this great impact start-up competition.
Prof. Mariana Christen Jakob
SEIF Award for Responsible Innovation, supported by UBS
Did you know that around 30% of global wood consumption is used to produce industrial packaging? The standard-sized models have a surprisingly short lifespan as the wooden structures don’t last long and there are limitations on how often they can be used. Ponera came up with the idea of a modular pallet system made from robust and biodegradable materials. The modules can be attached to each other to create pallets of any sizes. They are easy to assemble and disassemble, saving companies time and work.
The modular pallet system Ponera developed, convinced the jury with its potential to positively impact businesses logistics and finances as well as the environment. Thanks to a long lifespan and the possibility to assemble individual sized pallets, less wood consumption is required. These benefits and the great energy of the team behind it convinced the jury to award Ponera with the SEIF Award 2022 for Responsible Innovation.
SEIF Award for Future Impact Trend, supported By Julius Bär
Polymeric foam is made 99% out of petrochemicals, which can be harmful if not handled properly and cause pollution at their end of life. With only around 14% of foams being recycled, and a major part ending up in landfills or the ocean, these materials present an important threat for the environment. Groam’s mission is to reduce the footprint of polymeric foam by providing biodegradable foamed materials made from agricultural biomass waste. To do so, they offer a waste-based material formulation as granulate resin and a proprietary technology to foam such materials.
The start-up inspired the jury with its mission and circular approach to tackling the different mentioned challenges. Additionally, the jury was impressed by the well-thought-through solution, based on strong underlying research. Overall, by clearly speaking to the needs of an industry and tackling multiple societal challenges, Groam convinced the Jury members and is thus being granted the SEIF Award for Future Impact Trend.
SEIF Award for Scalable Solution, supported by SEIF
The world is facing a protein deficit. With the world population increasing and the growing demand for protein, new innovations are needed to feed people in a sustainable way to meet the UN Sustainable Development Goals. Traditional meat production can only be increased so far, and livestock farming currently represents 14.5% of total greenhouse gas emissions, which is unsustainable and damaging to the environment.
Roslin Technologies is a cutting‐edge biotech company focused on high-impact innovations in food and agriculture. Their primary focus is on animal cells: they aim to use unique cells to create and lead the market for cell lines to enable cultivated meat to reach the mass market around the world. The start-up convinced the Jury with its world-class scientific capacity. As a leader in supplying animal stem cells to cultured meat producers, Roslin Technologies is currently the only supplier of perpetually self-replicating cell lines to the industry. Its potential for scaling therefore lies in its ability to produce cells from real meat. Roslin’s cell lines have a strong potential to contribute strongly to the arrival of artificial meat on our plates.
SEIF Audience Award
In addition to the 3 prizes mentioned above, an audience prize was awarded at the end of the evening, which was voted for by both the in-person as well as the online audience. This voting showed which start-up was able to convince the audience the most and activate their own network. The prize went to Swistor, who won the audience over with their impact and business case –and will thus be supported by SEIF with an extensive impact assessment of their solution.
Rewatch the SEIF Awards Ceremony 2022!
Detailed information about the awards and the winners as well as all the finalists can be found in the brochure of this year’s awards, which can be downloaded below.