Startup story #28 - Heima

Eco-conscious travellers all over the world are looking for transformative experiences in pristine locations. Heima aims to enable visitors to access remote places in a sustainable way, combining conservation and development and offering a unique outdoor living experience. In this brief interview, Marco Antonio Caporale, co-founder and CEO, shares how the project began and their recent milestones.

What does Heima do and how did the project start?
We provide landowners, companies, and public institutions with a comprehensive hospitality solution, allowing them to create and manage unique outdoor living experiences for modern travellers. We handle every aspect, from concept development to project management and day-to-day operations. During our time in the hospitality industry, we recognised early on the growing demand for a new approach, both in terms of construction and guest experience in nature-based stays. This led us to develop a turnkey offering that integrates cutting-edge solutions, from foundation-free modular structures to next-generation clean technologies, aimed at creating a new type of eco-resort. While this is now a recognised trend, when we started, very few were working on similar concepts.

What is your vision?
The world is home to countless stunning locations, but making these places accessible to visitors often involves a significant trade-off between conservation and development. We founded Heima to provide a solution, enabling people to access remote areas sustainably. For us, being involved in every stage of the project—from concept development to daily operations—is crucial in ensuring this balance.

What have you achieved so far and what are your next milestones?
A major achievement was completing a two-year R&D project on modular hotel cabins with a minimal ecological footprint, in collaboration with BFH Berner Fachhochschule Architektur, Holz und Bau, which received funding through Innosuisse. This is a key component of our integrated offering. We have already partnered with a range of clients, both locally and internationally, developing smaller pilot projects and exploring opportunities in several countries. Our next major milestone is to build an entire resort, and we are actively seeking a strategic partner from the real estate sector to help us scale.

3 quick questions to wrap it up:

• What are the most important characteristics for an entrepreneur? Passion, discipline and resilience
• What is a big challenge you had to face with Heima? Building credibility as an emerging startup
• What unites you as a team? Shared values and aspirations