EY honors founder of Axon Active
Zurich/Lucerne – The consulting firm EY has handed out its Entrepreneur of the Year award in four categories. The winners included Stefan Muff, founder of the Lucerne-based firm Axon Active.
This year, EY Switzerland honored exceptional Swiss entrepreneurs for the 24th time, further details of which can be found in a press release. The EY Entrepreneur of the Year award was presented on October 29 in front of an audience of invited guests in Zurich. In total, five winners in four categories received an award.
Stefan Muff, founder of the Lucerne firm Axon Active, was named as the winner in the Services & Trade category. His company develops and tests software with a focus on the digital transformation. Muff is also the founder of the geodata provider Endoxon, which he sold in 2006. These days the company is better known as Google Maps. The jury selected Muff as the winner in this category because he is a “visionary and designer of an ecosystem in the IT industry that is rarely found in this country”.
Carlo Centonze emerged victorious in the Industry, High-Tech & Life Sciences category. In 2005, he founded the company HeiQ Materials as a spin-off from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich (ETH) together with Murray Height. Since then, the company based in Schlieren in the canton of Zurich has become something of an “innovator in the textile sector”, EY writes in the press release. In 2020, HeiQ carried out an IPO on the London stock exchange. The jury has now honored Centonze for his “his persistent inventive spirit, which has brought him from a start-up to an international innovator”.
In the Family Business category, Markus Gericke from the Gericke Group was named as the winner. He is now successfully running the company based in Regensdorf in the canton of Zurich after four generations of family ownership. The Gericke Group offers end-to-end solutions for the processing of bulk goods. The jury selected Gericke as the winner in this category due to the fact that through his commitment he is “maintaining a tradition for which Switzerland is valued and admired throughout the world”.
Two winners, namely Lukas Böni and Pascal Bieri, were named in the Emerging Entrepreneurs category. This duo jointly founded the start-up Planted Foods. The company, which is based in Kemptthal in the canton of Zurich, develops plant-based meat alternatives on the basis of peas and has already successfully completed two financing rounds. “What this team has achieved in two years since its foundation really serves as a role model for the Swiss start-up scene”, EY writes in the press release.
