You founded Haelixa with the goal of enabling the ethical, responsible and transparent production of goods. How does Haelixa further that goal?
Transparency throughout the production chain is essential in sustainable and ethical manufacturing. Our solutions enable true traceability that brings transparency to the supply chain. It is important to know the origin of a product and how it was produced, but the increasing complexity of supply chains makes that very difficult. In current traceability solutions like chain of custody systems, blockchains or products labels which are that are applied to the final product or its package, the product information is physically separated from the product itself and often neglect the stage of the raw material and product intermediates in the supply chain. What we do is recoupling the information with the product throughout all its production cycle.

“What we do is recoupling the information with the product throughout its all production cycle”

The way this works is by applying a tracer substance to the raw materials that encodes this information in DNA. How did you come up with this novel approach?
I was doing a Ph.D. on the technology when I realized the potential this has. Instead of pursuing an academic career, I wanted to bring this product to the market. My co-founder was working in the same research group at that time. We teamed up and decided to translate the original technology platform into marketable products and services.

Just recently you won the “Rising Innovator” Prize. What does this mean for you?
It is a recognition for the hard work and has brought me and Haelixa a lot of visibility, credibility and new contacts. The prize is awarded once per year to a woman under 35 who has developed a disruptive innovation. The jury also considers the potential impact on society. If I can be a role model and encourage other women to become entrepreneurs that would be a great effect and is indeed one of the expected outcomes of this recognition. The stereotypical CEO of a startup is still male, and most of the funding for startups goes to male teams.

Two years after you founded Haelixa, the specialty chemical company Clariant invested in your startup. How did this happen?
In these two years, we won many prizes including Venture Kick and the Venture Competition, which gave us early visibility. We talked to Clariant on the product side first and eventually when we were looking for investors, decided that Clariant is a good strategic investor.

What challenges did you encounter on the way from bringing the idea out of a lab to the point of a marketable product?
In the beginning, companies saw our technology more like a tool to combat counterfeit products. Today companies are more seriously interested in supply chain transparency than they were before, as they now understand that transparency is the first necessary step towards credible sustainability. The sustainable development goals have helped, and so has the demand from consumers.

You launched the first application of Haelixa’s technology in the gemstone industry together with the Gübelin Gem Lab. How did this cooperation start?
Gübelin approached us because there was no technical solution in this industry for establishing the provenance of gemstones. The development from initial discussion to launching the product actually was quite fast and took only a few months. We’re confident that our test will establish itself as a standard and are working on broadening the application in the gemstone industry.

You have projects in other industries as well, for marking cotton and other textile fibers. Why not focus on just one market first?
With gemstones, we had early recurring revenues. Now we are replicating the model with other industries. That necessitates sales efforts but the core technology platform is the same as well as the business model. In the cotton industry, we have recently proved that how our solution can be implemented to trace cotton from the field all the way through different manufacturing stages to the retailer. This is the first time that a consumer will be able to unravel the whole history of a garment. The organic cotton market is our entry field.

What about the food market?
The challenge in the food market is to understand the regulatory framework. The materials that we use for our tracer are harmless, but we need to assess technology compatibility with existing regulations. But again, more transparency is much needed also in food production and farming practices.