Grands Prix de l'innovation de la ville de Paris- 13th edition

The Grands Prix de l'Innovation awarded by the Paris City Council were presented on Tuesday 2 December. 470 Paris Region start-ups applied, 40 made it to the finals and, in the end, seven were awarded prizes at the 13th edition of the Grands Prix de l'Innovation (GPI) de Paris at the Cité de la Mode et du Design.

Dor several years now, the City of Paris has been committed to innovation and has positioned itself as a leader among innovative cities worldwide. Between 2001 and 2014, 100,000 m² of incubators have been created, with a survival rate of nearly 80 % and nearly 15,000 jobs at stake in Paris. 

An additional 100,000 m² of "innovative surfaces" are planned for the coming years: coworking spaces, teleworking centres, modular surfaces adapted to stratups, "multi-purpose" buildings combining housing, shared work spaces, company hotels, shops, etc. Spaces of a new kind spread over new sectors such as urban logistics, sports economy, bio-engineering, tourism.

The Grands Prix de l'Innovation are therefore intended to support the development of innovative Paris Region companies in fast-growing sectors and to reward those that, through their innovation, will improve the life of the city and develop the Parisian economic fabric. Not only through these Awards, but also with the financial support of partners such as BPI France by creating the Paris Innovation Seed Fund with a budget of €21 million.
Jean-Louis Missika, Deputy in charge of urban planning, architecture, Greater Paris projects, economic development and attractiveness, declares innovation as "It is a major tool for building the city of the future, for improving the daily lives of city dwellers, for reducing the city's ecological footprint and for creating jobs. The City of Paris is proud to be carrying this ambitious innovation support programme by opening numerous incubators, promoting open innovation, financing startups and urban experimentation, and has been doing so for over 10 years". See interview with JL Missika for UP'.

The Grand Prize Winners for Innovation

- Winner of the "Eco-innovations" category + special mention "design": OUREPARER.COM
- Winner in the Business Services category: REDBIRD
- Winner in the "Digital Technologies" category: TRADELAB
- Winner of the "Digital Content" category: SPORTEASY
- Winner in the "Services to Individuals" category: ORNIKAR
- Winner in the "Health and Wellness" category: DREEM
- Winner of the Special Mention for Social Innovation: SIMPLON.CO

Presentation of the winners

OUREPARER.COM
"Stop throwing away your old stuff"could be the leitmotif of the start-up Oureparer.com. This online service founded by Clément Follin-Arbelet and François Penin offers its users to find the nearest repairer for any type of object. Repair is a huge challenge for our society of hyperconsumption today; a challenge both for our purchasing power, for the planet but also for our way of consuming in general. Nowadays, finding a solution to repair broken or faulty objects remains a real challenge!
Now in beta version, Oureparer.com is a web platform which, from 2015, will allow everyone to easily find the best solution to repair all their objects (household appliances, furniture, telephone, bicycle, computer, ...), close to home. Through an innovative system, the user will be able to compare and choose very simply the repairer best suited to his project, according to many criteria (price, distance, skills, etc.).
The new version of the site will be online in the first quarter of 2015 and promises to "redefine the repair landscape", according to its creators.
www.oureparer.com

REDBIRD
Helping companies with drones is the activity proposed by this company. Three major sectors are targeted: supervision of infrastructure networks, monitoring of mines and large construction sites and assistance to precision farming. Redbird collects data from the overflights of its UAVs and provides decision support information to its customers. Created at the beginning of 2013, following DGAC regulations authorising commercial flights by civil UAVs, Redbird acquires and then processes the data acquired by UAVs.
As a technology integrator for the industrial and agricultural world, Redbird provides companies with global solutions to optimize their resources and improve productivity through data analysis and processing.
The breakthrough initiated by Redbird is based on the development of proprietary and industry-specific algorithmic layers that enable data processing and analysis to be adapted to different businesses and missions.
www.redbird.fr

TRADELAB
"To make Internet advertising more respectful of Internet users, by sending them a message adapted to their profiles with controlled repetition and to offer advertisers optimisation and transparency of their media investments".. In short, target audiences as well as possible, do not bombard Internet users with advertising in a loop.
Tradelab is a technology platform that combines programmatic media buying and audience targeting, specialising in display, mobile and video campaigns in Real Time Bidding. Its Data Optimisation platform allows you to target the right internet users, at the best time and only in visible and effective locations.
The team has developed a range of technologies enabling it to carry out, on behalf of advertisers, high-performance display, mobile & video campaigns, on qualitative and brandsafe inventories (sites and advertising spaces).
Located in the heart of Paris, in the 8th arrondissement, there are currently 45 people working on the development of this Startup created in 2011. 
www.tradelab.fr

SPORTEASY
A web and mobile application to facilitate the life of coaches and joueurs : to structure the life of a team and animate it on a daily basis. The coach can share all kinds of information with his players via e-mail or mobile notification. The players will be able to consult their team's information, find out statistics or even discuss among themselves on an internal discussion forum.
SportEasy is a web and mobile application for all amateur sports teams. It brings together in a single tool everything that coaches and players need to structure and animate the life of their team:
- to coaches, SportEasy offers considerable time savings: centralization of player information, one-click email/mobile notifications to players, management of availability for matches and training sessions, tactics and team composition, monitoring of individual and team statistics (tactics and statistics being adapted to each sport).

- to players, SportEasy offers a common interface to consult information about their team (times and locations of events, results and statistics) and share their emotions before and after matches (discussion forums, photos, voting for the best player of the match).
www.sporteasy.net

ORNIKAR
They want to dust off the driving school, but at the moment they are encountering strong opposition from them! Benjamin Gaignault and Alexandre Chartier founded Ornikar in order to offer its users the possibility to find a driving instructor wherever they are and at times that are wider than those of traditional driving schools. Lessons that should be charged 34.90 euros per hour. This is a cause for concern for traditional driving schools, which have not hesitated to attack the startup from the outset.
Ornikar is set to become the first online driving school to use its national network of qualified teachers to offer mobile and discounted driving licence training.
With the help of new technologies, students will be able to geolocate teachers close to their position and then book driving hours in just a few clicks, with the possibility of recommending them if they wish.
Founded by two young friends for whom learning to drive should not be a luxury, but rather a moment to share experiences and raise awareness of road safety, Ornikar wants to bring a new approach to an ageing training that is more adapted to its time.
As the most widely taken exam in France, with a very large majority of young people (80 % are between 18 and 25 years old), it is becoming a priority to renovate this apprenticeship using new technologies.
www.ornikar.com

DREEM
We used to know about applications that analyze sleep, now this is the headband that improves it. Resulting from work on neurosciences, it carries out stimulations during sleep which lengthen and improve it. The result is a reduction in the feeling of tiredness when waking up, but also an improvement in memory and concentration. The headband performs stimuli during the user's sleep that lengthen and improve deep sleep.
The product, which is currently in the prototyping phase, will be available to the general public in the form of a connected banner associated with a smartphone application allowing the monitoring of stimuli and improvement of sleep nights.
By developing this first product, Dreem hopes to enable as many people as possible to significantly improve their sleep and thus their cognitive performance when they wake up.
Created in July 2014, Dreem is a winner of the Global Innovation Contest, the Jean-Louis Gérondeau Prize, and currently has 10 people in the team. See article in UP' of November 2014.
www.dreem-devices.com

SIMPLON.CO
This solidarity company created in April 2013 in Montreuil offers free six-month training courses in digital professions (application developers, digital referent, etc.). The programme is primarily open to job seekers, RSA recipients, young people from working-class neighbourhoods, but also to girls who are often poorly represented in these fields.
Simplon.co is a certified company that offers free 6-month face-to-face training courses (web/mobile application developer, digital reference, data craftsman). It has been approved by the Mission French Tech and selected as part of the presidential initiative "La France S'Engage".
In January 2014, the Simplon.co initiative opened a detached class in Villeneuve la Garenne (92) and a subsidiary in Cluj in Romania, in October 2014 a digital school in a rural environment in the heart of the Perche natural park and in November Archipel: a new site in Paris in the 8th district in partnership with Aurore, which runs an emergency accommodation centre for homeless families. Other spin-offs are currently underway in France and abroad.
www.simplon.co

Photos: ©Jean-Baptiste Gurliat