This year the Global Pitchfest, organised by swissnex China and venturelab, took place at breakfast time in Gemma restaurant where you can eat one of the fanciest breakfasts in Shanghai; but even the most mouth-watering breakfast ever could not have taken the spotlight away from the 22 impressive start-ups competing this year.
The 10 venture leaders, who joined us after three days in Beijing, and 12 international China based start-ups were divided in four groups for the 1st round. Even if the rules looked quite simple (90 seconds of pitching to convince the audience), the challenge was still tough regarding the high level of all our start-ups this year. At the end of each group, a winner had been selected by the mesmerised audience; letting 4 start-ups competing for the 2nd round.
Our really rigorous audience selected 4 ventures leaders to compete in the 2nd round. The overly well-trained Swiss Start-ups had in fact let no chance to the other worthy competitors.
After a short break, the 4 selected start-ups (Comba Group SA, Twingtec, Rqmicro and Nanolive SA) were ready for the final round. The finalist would this time have 2 minutes to convince a jury of experts. Each pitch was followed by a short Q&A session to help our meticulous jury to choose the most promising start-up. The task was certainly not easy for our expert given the inspiring performances of the 4 Venture Leaders. After a short wait that certainly seemed ages for our finalists as the suspense was at a peak, the jury declared Nanolive SA the winner of the 2015 Global Pitchfest edition. Nanolive SA won the opportunity to come back to China for a Business Trip in order to meet new investors in such a promising country for a start-up.
Even if the trip was only won by Nanolive SA, we can say that all the 22 Start-ups were winners this morning as they all won the audience and experts attention as potential customers and investors.
We would like to thank our wonderful partners, swisscham, entrepnr and tusStar for their support and our faithful audience for their commitment.
Contributed by Loris Savary, Junior Project Leader at swissnex China