START-UPS

10 brilliant start-ups from Bordeaux to watch

6 Dec 2018

Place la Bourse in Bordeaux, mirrored in water by night.

Place de la Bourse, Bordeaux. Image: © Delphotostock/Stock.adobe.com

Famed for its wine, Bordeaux has also produced a fine crop of tech start-ups in areas such as e-commerce, fintech, SaaS and mechatronics.

Bordeaux is seen as the wine industry capital of the world and is also famous for its historical architecture. The city has been pretty much at the crossroads of trade since Roman times and is renowned for its beauty. “Take Versailles, add Antwerp, and you have Bordeaux,” said French writer Victor Hugo.

Dominated by the Garonne river, the city continues to maintain relevance through a new, bustling generation of digital start-ups spanning wine-tech to fintech.

The city has proven a magnet for a supporting ecosystem of accelerators, which include Héméra, Le Campement, Unitec and Bordeaux Technowest.

Bordeaux Entrepreneurs is an organisation founded by local entrepreneurs to share their knowledge, and government bodies such as French Tech Bordeaux are active in the region.

Here are the start-ups from the Bordeaux area to watch in the year ahead.

Actiwine

Actiwine is a global B2B marketplace for wine professionals. It allows buyers to negotiate online with winegrowers and manage the logistics. Led by CEO Eric Lévy, Actiwine was founded in 2014 and has raised €235,000 in funding from investor Cabiedes & Partners.

Azendoo

Azendoo is the creator of a project management platform for agile developers and high-performance managers. It enables teams to organise, collaborate and track projects from one single place. Azendoo was founded in 2012 by Ben Droulin, Chris Gagin and Greg Lefort, and has raised $2.4m from investors including The Family.

Blue Valet

Blue Valet is the creator of a valet parking platform to facilitate parking in airports and at train stations. Created in 2015 by two entrepreneur brothers, Hugo and Benoit Ricard, Blue Valet has established itself as a leader in valet parking in many big French cities. The company has raised $2m to date in a funding round in 2017 from Sofimac Partners.

Qucit

Qucit is a start-up specialising in the optimisation of urban services. Its Urban Predictive Platform is an AI-based platform modelling human behaviour in urban environments and has several fields of application, such as shared-vehicle systems, on-street and off-street parking, road operation, and redesign of public spaces. Founded in 2014 by Raphaël Cherrier, Qucit raised €1.7m in July 2018 from investors including Urban-X and Bpifrance.

Geev

Founded in 2015, Geev is a collaborative app that allows members to either donate objects or collect various items for free. It breathes a second life into these objects by allowing members to discuss and meet. Led by CEO Hakim Baka, Geev has raised €3.2m in funding from private investors.

L’Addition

L’Addition has created the tablet-based cash register of the future that allows retailers to manage checkouts, order-taking and accounting, all within a single app. L’Addition was founded by Olivier Repessé in 2012 and has raised €5m in investment from investors that include CM-CIC Capital Privé.

Legalvision

Legalvision has created a software-as-a-service (SaaS) platform that allows lawyers and business owners to manage their legal documents and process. Legalvision was founded in 2015 by Gonçalo Alves and Miguel Figueiredo.

Linguali

Linguali is the creator of an interpreting system that enables simultaneous interpreting at events without equipment, enabling event speakers and participants to communicate through an on-site interpreter over their smartphone and Wi-Fi. Linguali was founded in 2014 by François-Xavier Bodin and James Anderson.

Max

Max has developed a virtual customer assistant that looks after budgeting, bank accounts, homecare services, and personalised financial advice such as investing and insurance. Led by CEO Didier Ardouin, it raised €20m in funding from founding investor Crédit Mutuel Arkéa in 2017.

Yescapa

Yescapa is an online marketplace that allows you to rent an RV, camper or conversion van, and travel all across Europe. It allows you to choose between more than 6,000 vehicles. Founded in 2012 by Adrien Pinson and Benoît Panel, it has raised €3.6m in funding to date from investors including MAIF Avenir.

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Updated, 10.33am, 11 December 2018: This article was updated to replace Entomo Farm in our listing as it was discovered after publication that the start-up had unfortunately gone into liquidation. We have replaced it with AI platform Qucit.

Editor’s note: Due to the vagaries of entrepreneurial life, we sometimes fall behind on individual companies’ most current status. We wish the founders of Entomo Farm well and will strive to continue to keep our readers up to date with the latest happenings in the start-up scene. 

John Kennedy is a journalist who served as editor of Silicon Republic for 17 years

editorial@siliconrepublic.com