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“France is about innovation,” Benoît Guidee, Director of the French Office in Taipei, asserts in his opening remarks for La French Tech. The event marks the special relationship between the Meet Startup Festival and the French Office in Taipei.
Split into two parts, La French Tech celebrates innovation made in France. On the one hand, the event introduced French accelerators and incubators who have helped France to become a viable startup hub. On the other hand, and true to its roots, La French Tech also gave French startups a chance to pitch their projects to an international audience.
According to Guidee, they “launched La French Tech in Taiwan a year ago as a platform to allow both countries to cooperate and help each other in regard to fostering innovation together.” Additionally, they also sought to break with some cherished stereotypes of France and introduce the tourist favorite as perfect environment for young entrepreneurs and companies, both in the public and private sectors.
In the first segment, La French Tech introduced the overall ecosystem for entrepreneurship that has emerged in France over the last decade. The event included not only speakers from accelerators, incubators, and innovation agencies, but also public experts such as Anne-Catherine Milleron from the French Embassy Seoul.
One of the presenting accelerators was Le 104.
Hailing from Paris, Le 104 seeks to establish a hub for creative industries. According to deputy director Valerie Senghor, startups in this field have contributed significantly to the French economy.
With startups having increased dramatically since 2012, the creative industry by now has already introduced more than twice as many jobs than the automotive industry.
Senghor also introduced some successful examples that benefitted from 104Factory’s tutelage. Taken together, these examples demonstrate their conscious effort to think outside the box and give idiosyncratic entrepreneurs a chance.
For instance, Timescope has installed visual devices throughout Paris that allow tourists to take a trip back in time and learn about the metropole’s complex history. Sericyne, on the other hand, has taken a millennia-old material – silk – and given it new applications and forms through innovative techniques.
As Senghor puts it, they do not simply focus on marketability and profit margins when evaluating projects. Rather, 104Factory hopes to support innovative teams and thereby allow for artistic experiences and urban experimentation beneficial to the general public. Moreover, 104Factory-backed projects currently exhibit a survival rate of 88%, demonstrating the sustainability of these efforts.
One of La French Tech’s main missions is to bring Taiwanese and French entrepreneurs and startups together. One successful example of such cooperation is Taiwanese data science startup MoBagel, which has received backing from French incubator Le Village to present their pitch in Paris.
Similarly, French startup Eatsmart has been able to team up with a French chef and a Taiwanese IT specialist thanks to the shared platform.
In the second part of the event, then, a group of startups presented the diversity of French innovation. Be it in regard to IoT, where eDevice’s solution seeks to interconnect medical machines, or in the field of Virtual Reality, where GoTouchVR strives to introduce the new technology to a broader audience, French startups have established themselves at the forefront of innovation.
Unsurprisingly, Guidee asserts that they “are immensely proud of La French Tech,” and as La French Tech coordinator Laurent Le Guyader pointed out, they are seeking to broaden its impact. As part of this effort, La French Tech will be hosting another event in Kaohsiung next week.
©2024 Business Next Media Corp. All Rights Reserved. No.102, Guangfu S. Rd., Da'an Dist., Taipei City 106, Taiwan