In the recent past, the French startup scenes have seen an extraordinary growth that shows no sign of stopping. Last year, the President of the French Republic, Emmanuel Macron, announced a massive investment of capital around €5 billion into the French tech startups in a bid to grow more billion-euro startups.
It’s worth mentioning that the French government’s goal is to have 20 unicorns by 2025, compared to four that exist today. On the other hand, the government has adopted a new initiative called PACTE (Plan d’Action pour la Croissance et la Transformation des Entreprise or Action Plan for Business Growth and Transformation) in France’s economic transformation.
The PACTE will simplify various processes, including setting up a business online, easing the hiring process, tax reform, and the ability to access funding. As a result, the Action Plan will enable SMEs to grow, conquer external markets, and create jobs.
In this regard, the French startups have raised nearly €250 million this week, which is a positive sign of France finally breaking into the club with a series of substantial funding. Let’s have a look at the startups that made big funding announcements this week.
Qonto (Funding raised: €103.5M)
Qonto, a neobank for SME’s and freelancers founded in 2016 by Steve Anavi and Alexandre Prot, has raised $115 million (approx €103.5 million) in a Series C funding round.
The funding will help Qonto grow its business and attract new small and medium businesses while also strengthening the product, including making more adaptations to local customer needs.
What they do: Based out of Paris, Qonto combines design and innovative technology, providing financial services to businesses. Since its launch in July 2017, Qonto has attracted 65,000 SMEs in France, Italy, Spain, and Germany.
Lumapps (Funding raised: €21.2M)
Lumapps that offers social and mobile enterprise software solutions has raised €21.2M in Series B funding. The company will employ fresh funds to accelerate product development, along with the expansion of global sales and marketing.
What they do: This platform offers social intranet service that it says is not only social but also collaborative and comprising of a corporate portal that is said to make top-down communication relevant and appealing to all employees of an organisation.
Homeloop (Funding raised: €20M)
Founded in 2016 by Aurélien Gouttefarde, Homeloop is the first immediate real estate purchasing service that has emerged in France.
Recently, this company has secured € 20 million in financing to accelerate its growth and confirms its position as the leading iBuying company in France.
What they do: With this platform, Homeloop aims to simplify the real estate transaction by helping owners to sell and quickly and by allowing buyers to buy with confidence.
Hivebrite (Funding raised: €18M)
Hivebrite is an all-in-one SaaS solution that helps businesses around the world build and manage their community website. Last week, the company secured €18 million in Series A funding round. With this funding, the company aims to accelerate global expansion, invest further in product innovation, and recruit top talent.
What they do: The platform allows organisations to create a community website with a private portal for their members to interact, and to manage their community by collecting memberships, organising events, sharing opportunities, and sending communication campaigns.
Gojob (Funding raised: €11M)
Founded by Pascal Lorne in 2015, Gojob is a marketplace for temporary workers. The company has raised €11 million, bringing the total amount to €30 million.
What they do: For the uninitiated, this platform offers temporary assignments throughout France and in all business sectors. In 2019, the company placed 10,000 workers, making it a 100% digital approach based on an algorithm which allows for even faster and more accurate matching, at half the cost.
Snowleader (Funding raised: €10M)
Founded by Thomas Rouault, Snowleader is an online store specialised in winter, outdoor, and street sports. The company has secured €10 million led by 123 IM, BNP Paribas Développement, Sofimac Régions.
Containous (Funding raised: €9M)
Containous, the cloud-native networking company has closed $10 million (€9 million) in Series A funding led by Balderton Capital, with previous investors Elaia and 360 Capital Partners.
The company is planning to use this funding to quickly build up and expand Containous’ unified and centralized management platform purpose-built for cloud-native applications and microservices.
What they do: Founded in 2016, Containous’s mission is to simplify cloud-native adoption for all enterprises. The company’s popular open-source projects include Traefik, the cloud-native edge router with more than 1.4 billion downloads and used by the world’s largest web companies, and Maesh, a service mesh designed to simplify service-to-service communications for developers building modern, cloud-native applications.
UNIQUE HERITAGE MEDIA (Funding raised: €8.5M)
UHM, a media and publishing company specialized in creating content for young people, and their families have announced an €8.5 million fundraising.
What they do: The primary purpose of this fundraising is to help UNIQUE HERITAGE MEDIA accelerate its growth in the publishing, media, and ICT sectors targeting young people and their families. UHM aims to achieve a turnover of €60 million for 2020, for profitable growth at the highest standard of the market for 2023.
Wupatec (Funding raised: €3M)
Recently, Wupatec announced the closing of a €3 million financing with IRDI Soridec, Aquiti Gestion, and InnoEnergy.
What they do: For the uninitiated, Wupatec has developed unique IPs to decrease the power consumption of RF front-end significantly. The company’s unique architecture of its envelope tracking (ET) modulator, coupled with mainstream GaN Process, delivers an ultra-compact and cost-effective solution, with outstanding performances, a breakthrough not uncounted in RF front-end in the past two decades.
Fair&Smart (Funding raised: €2.2M)
Founded in 2016, Fair & Smart develops ethical solutions for managing personal data, both for individuals and organizations. The company recently raised €2.2 million led by Bpifrance, ILP Innovation, and business angels.
What they do: With this platform, the company aims to restore trust between individuals and organizations through more transparency and control given to the data subject.
Main image credits: Qonto
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