Start-up Blue Shift, which is developing smart sunscreen that turns its protection level up and down depending on the weather, was the winner of this year’s Venture competition at ETH Zurich.
In all, 142 business plans were submitted for the competition, ten of which made it to final.
The volume of entries meant it was not easy to choose ten best business plans to go forward to the final, according to Thomas Knecht, former director of McKinsey, Switzerland, and founder of the Venture Competition. “It pleases me to see that the interest in entrepreneurship has increased, despite difficult economic conditions,” he said.
In the end, the idea that most impressed the jury was Blue Shift’s intelligent UV-filtering technology for use in sunscreens that can assess the sun’s intensity and adjust the protection factor appropriately.
More than half (77) of the 142 business plans were submitted by teams from Swiss universities and the rest by groups with no university affiliation. 24 teams were from the ETH Zurich, 12 from the EPF Lausanne.
Knecht founded the Venture competition in 1998. Previous participants have spawned 250 successful companies, creating more than 2,500 jobs.
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