Supported by the scientific and technological services of the French embassies to the US and Canada, the NETVA programme (New Technology Venture Accelerator) helps young French businesses to find their feet across the Atlantic by introducing them to the contacts and resources they need to penetrate the North American market.
2016: a winning year for Inria!
Since 2010, no fewer than 65 start-ups have benefited from the programme. This year, of the 23 businesses chosen by the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Development to take part in the NETVA programme, 5 are start-ups “made in Inria”. Several have already made headlines thanks to the speed of their development even though some of them only came into being in 2015! The evidence is overwhelming that support for business creation is crucial to ensuring the vitality of technology transfer.
Five winning start-ups
- ANATOSCOPE is a project set up jointly by François Faure, an Inria researcher and a professor at the CNRS, Frederick Vanmeer, a PhD in robotics, Olivier Palombi, a neurosurgeon and professor of anatomy at the Grenoble CHU (University Hospital Centre) and Benjamin Gilles, a researcher with the CNRS. The business offers orthodontists and orthopaedists the possibility of simulating and developing medical treatments and appliances using digital 3D clones generated from patients’ medical data.
- THERAPIXEL: Founded by Olivier Clatz from Asclepios team and Pierre Fillard from Parietal team,THERAPIXEL offers a flexible medical imaging solution that can be adapted to different locations and users. The business has just raised €600,000 to internationalise itsFluid application, which, among other things, uses contactless visual recognition to allow surgeons to access the medical images they need in the operating theatre.
- MAKITOO was developed by the Spirals team. Nicolas Petitprez, an Inria engineer, has been appointed CTO of the company alongside CEO Emmanuel Dissoubray. After several years of research at ILIS (Lille Institute of Health Engineering) and months of development at the TechnoFounder start-up studio (a prize-winner in the national i-lab innovation challenge), the new business is now marketing a “bug reporting” solution that can be used to manage IT issues in Android mobile apps. The start-up has already raised €450,000€ this year to push sales development and support new languages.
- PIXYL emerged from the work of the Mistis team with Senan Doyle, an Inria post-doc and engineer, as CEO. The business provides a neuro-imaging application that automatically analyses lesion loads using brain MRI. The aim is to improve decision taking during clinical trials and in routine clinical practice. The application is currently being used to provide precise and reliable monitoring of developing pathologies, with or without processing.
- REGAIND was already a prize-winner in the Worldwide Innovation Challenge! Founded by Guillaume Seguin of the Willow team and by Arnaud Laurenty, the company proposes an artificial intelligence application that automatically sorts and classifies photo collections in order to simplify and expand their use.
For more information
- More information about the program
- How to apply ? (for 2017, in French)
