2015 DigiWorld Award winners
Powertime, Sharalike, Locarise and Fruition Sciences
Montpellier, 19 November 2015: At the 37th annual DigiWorld Summit, in partnership with Business France and La French Tech, IDATE has just announced the winners of the first annual DigiWorld Awards, recognising digital industry start-ups created by French entrepreneurs outside of France.
And the winners of the 2015 DigiWorld Awards are…
The start-ups eligible to be nominated had to satisfy the following criteria:
- Be a company created outside of France by at least one French person;
- With no offices or operations in France;
- And have a digital tech industry business as its main activity: equipment and devices, networks and telecoms, Internet services and applications (BtoC, BtoB…), M2M, IoT…
The Jury made an initial selection from among the roughly 40 applications received, choosing three start-ups from each region. A Special Jury Prize has been awarded to an international-bound start-up created in the Montpellier Métropole Méditerranée and Région Languedoc-Roussillon development ecosystem.
“This award is fantastic recognition of the hard work we have put in for the past 5 years” says Powertime MD Sébastien Lacour. “Powertime has always been pioneer in the mobile segment, with over 70% of its transactions done via our iOS, Android, BlackBerry and Windows Apps. We deliver an impeccable customer experience, have a proven business model and a rich product focused on Mobile in the Utility and Bill payment industries. Our goal is now to leverage our expertise and our experience in South Africa to take part in the mobile payments revolution worldwide. We look forward to partner with more people to further accelerate our growth.”
Identifying and rewarding start-ups created outside of France
‘We were so pleased when we got the idea for these awards, which are an original way to recognise and reward French entrepreneurs working far from home,” says IDATE Chairman, François Barrault. Adding, “they are of course an opportunity to reward these companies, but especially to send out a strong message that France is innovating around the globe. It is also an initiative entirely in sync with the aims of IDATE and the DigiWorld Summit, namely to explore and analyse innovative markets around the world”.
This is a perfect illustration of the multifarious talents of “French Tech” – a term used to refer to all those who work for or with French start-ups in France and abroad. French Tech Director, David Monteau, says that “this prize fits perfectly with the globalisation action plan for French Tech in 2015, as the Government decided to support the emergence of a French Tech Hub in major cities around the world that represent key centres for development for French Tech start-ups”.