French govt’s start-up contest 2.0 plans a wider incubator base

The winners of Season 2 of French Tech Ticket, a competition sponsored by the French government that invites applications from early-stage technology start-ups from across the world, are set to be finalised over the next few weeks.

In Season 1 in 2015, out of about 1,300 applications from various countries, two early-stage Indian start-ups made the cut to spend January-December 2016 with Paris-based incubators. The founders of the winning start-ups, Guesswork.co and Dymond Cleantech, say the link to European markets and the opportunities to learn directly from customers were beneficial.

Raphael Kiran, founder and CEO, Dymond Cleantech, says: “Our start-up was at a very early stage by the end of 2015. We had a prototype, experimental set-ups and a business model, and French Tech Ticket offered start-up-tailored initiatives.”

Mani Doraisamy, founder, Guesswork, shares: “We had customers and a revenue stream in 2015. One of our customers was a Germany-based company funded by Rocket Internet, and we wanted to try and add other Rocket Internet companies as customers.”

In 2017, French Tech Ticket’s organisers hope for at least 70 start-ups to be hosted across more than 40 French incubation centres. Sylvain Biard, Managing Director - Mumbai Office, and Head of Department for South Asia - Tech and Services, Business France, notes that while Season 1 was in some ways a trial and featured only Paris-based incubators, Season 2 will have incubators outside Paris, across at least 12 cities.

“There are about 4,000 technology start-ups in Paris alone, but only 10 per cent of them have foreign funding. There’s a big opportunity for this to grow within 2-3 years to about 30 per cent; we feel that we should also be open to other ecosystems,” Biard says.

According to him, foreign entrepreneurs and start-ups will be able to apply to very specific incubators in Season 2, and these may be focussed on sports-tech, health-tech, biotech, clean-tech or be invested in technology for tourism, for example.

As a product recommendation engine, Guesswork needed access to the European market. Founder Doraisamy praises incubator StartUp42 for walking a fine line — consistently reviewing weekly goals without micro-managing progress — and helping create a healthy “operational cadence” that’s crucial for an early-stage start-up.

“Picking the right incubator is important. We were lucky to be in StartUp42, which has already mentored three Y Combinator start-ups,” Doraisamy shares.

Dymond Cleantech’s patented technology cleans water using superior-quality diamond electrodes. Founder Kiran explains: “If you’re developing a hi-tech, biotech, pharma, or a clean-tech product and you need a lot of R&D, France is the ideal country to launch your start-up. There are research tax rebates, price-to-quality ratio of engineering skills, R&D partnerships, support from government and simplified bureaucratic process, and we had the French atomic energy commission (CEA) as our partner.”

Besides French Tech Ticket, other private incubators and regional initiatives are also reportedly targeting foreign start-ups in a bid to maintain international diversity in the French ecosystem. And while this opportunity makes France an ideal landscape for early-stage technology start-ups from anywhere to thrive, there’s also been a mindset shift among Indian technology start-ups: some of them have clear aims to win in international markets with their products/solutions.

The founders of both Dymond Cleantech and Guesswork believe the French Tech Ticket programme differentiates itself from similar initiatives elsewhere.

“We’re driven by customer needs — real-life customer problems. And we got more feedback from customers than mentors and that’s helped us develop our product and make it unique from that of our competitors,” Kiran says.

Doraisamy says: “Even if you go to the world’s best accelerator, like Y Combinator, there’s no guarantee you’ll get a resident visa to run your business in the US. You’ve got to get the visa yourself by demonstrating extraordinary ability. It’s a big distraction. French Tech Ticket is a government initiative that gives you everything on a platter — right from visa to workspace — so you can focus on your start-up.”