2 startups Inria honoured by NETVA 2018

Accelerating the impact of French startups

The aim of NETVA, which was created in 2010, is to address the need for internationalisation of French startups developing innovative, high value-added products.  The programme is aimed at French startups and SMEs in innovative technologies, originating from or backed by research laboratories, regardless of the sector of activity, and which intend to develop in North America. NETVA, a key partner of Inria's innovation policy, has already helped over 65 start-ups.

The winners of the competition take part in a personalised programme in three stages:

1. a training seminar in Paris in June on the approach to North American markets;
2. the support of a North American mentor who guides them in their understanding of the American environment and in their search for partnerships;
3. an immersion week at the end of October in one of the four most dynamic ecosystems in the United States and Canada: Massachusetts (Boston), Silicon Valley (San Francisco), Washington D.C and Ontario (Toronto).

Inria startups in the spotlight

Once again this year, the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs and its partners selected 15 innovative French start-ups from around 100 applications to participate in the 2018 NETVA program, which offers personalized support to familiarize themselves with North American markets.

Among the winners were two start-ups founded by INRIA researchers:

• Founded by former Inria researchers and engineers, InSimo is a startup which operates in the field of surgical simulation. The start-up is already a laureate of the i-Lab competition in 2013 and it is based at the civilian hospital of Strasbourg, next to the Institute of Image Guided Surgery (IHU). InSimo develops virtual organs with high-fidelity bio-mechanical behaviour, that are deformable and operable with force feedback. These organs are used for the learning of surgical gestures on a virtual patient and for the preoperative planning to develop clinical reasoning. The start-up is currently developing a software for a cataract-surgery simulator, together with the American organization HelpMeSee, and the software diSplay Learning, which aims at foreseeing the best operating strategy for a given patient.
• Ekinnox  aims to democratize the quantified and visual analysis of walking in rehabilitation, by developing a simple, fast and accessible solution. Thanks to a unique 3D camera and computer vision algorithms, it is delivered ready to use and requires no prior preparation for analysis.

Since 2016, 7 Inria startups have already been honoured by NETVA : in 2016, Anatoscope, Makitoo, Pixyl, Regaind et Therapixel, in 2017, Lybero.net et IExec.