The Parisian startups and scaleups to watch in 2021

At its core Meero is a global marketplace for photographers, which companies can use to get professional photos done quickly — for example of commercial property for rent or clothes for sale. It handles paperwork and payment and takes a cut.

Meero works with the likes of Uber Eats, Deliveroo and Airbnb, and claims to deliver one photoshoot every 25 seconds. The wacky thing about the company is not so much the idea but the amount of money it has raised, taking in $45m investment in 2018 and another $230m in 2019. Who knew there was so much money in photos?

Meero's CEO, Thomas Rebaud, is optimistic about the company's valuation. “The photography market globally is worth between $80bn and $100bn. The question we asked is: can Meero grab 5% of that enormous market?” he told Sifted. “I think we can.”

Read more: Could Meero’s founder be the next Emmanuel Macron?

Back in 2016 French startup Alan won a French insurance licence. This may not sound like a big deal, but it was the first one that has been awarded since the 1980s, allowing the young team to have a crack at disrupting the country’s €36bn health insurance market.

On the back of this win, Alan started providing health insurance for employees of small companies, differentiating itself from the century-old industry giants such as Axa and Generali with a simple pricing structure and cheerful app.

Today it is seen as one of the most promising startups in France, targeting increasingly big companies and with a long-term mission to become a platform for a range of different healthcare services (for example, connecting people with doctors) and not just health insurance.

Cofounder and chief executive Jean-Charles Samuelian has told Sifted that he is pushing hard to expand the offering. “If we want to become the European champion of healthcare — becoming a gateway to the whole healthcare system — we need to be aggressive.”

Further reading: 4 questions for Alan cofounder Jean-Charles Samuelian Inside Alan: the French healthtech startup with no meetings and transparent salaries

Doctolib is an online platform where customers can book medical appointments with healthcare professionals, who pay a monthly subscription fee to be hosted on the site.

Launched in 2013, it has been a runaway success in a crowded market, currently employing around 1,400 people across 40 offices in France and Germany. It receives 30m online visits from patients each month.

The company is the continent’s best-funded healthcare booking app, having raised a total of €237m, including a €150m round in 2019 which took the company to ‘unicorn’ status with a valuation of more than €1bn.

During the coronavirus pandemic, Doctolib jumped from 1,000 to 100,000 video consultations per day in just a month and, speaking to Sifted at the time, said it was looking to hire a further 3,000 people.

Read more: Why Doctolib is hiring 3,000 people (hint: it’s not Covid)

Launched in 2020, Pennylane supplies business with real-time financial data, providing more insight than a typical third-party accountant — though they hope this will support accountants, rather than bypass them.

In January 2021, the fintech raised $18.4m in a Series A round that included Global Founders Capital and Partech. Pennylane’s services are now used by over 500 customers, all based in France, and it reported $2.4m in revenue at the end of last year.

It’s also on our list of French fintechs to watch post-Brexit.

Leavy is an Airbnb of sorts: an online platform for short-term rentals. The twist is a heavier reliance on community, whose members can for instance make money by taking care of listed homes and showing guests around their city.

Founder Aziza Chaouachi says she started the service because her own flat was “too crappy” to rent through an Airbnb concierge, and she turned to friends for help instead.

Behind Leavy’s platform, complex algorithms are at work studying travel trends and flows. That’s how the company decides in advance how much it’s going to pay hosts, regardless of whether anyone actually stays in their apartment.

Further reading: Europe’s answer to Airbnb is all about local community

Altaroad is a rare deep tech startup founded by three women: Cécile Villette, Bérengère Lebental and Rihab Jerbi. The company has raised €5m and Challenges magazine named it one of 100 startups to watch.

The company employs custom algorithms and sensors placed in and on roadways to record vehicles’ weights. This data helps ensure that the trucks entering and leaving the construction zone are within load limits, decreasing their potential of damaging bridges and other highway infrastructure. The startup’s sensors also aim to monitor road degradation, so repairs can be planned before potholes form.

The fintech helps companies manage company expenses with digital interfaces and physical pre-paid (pre-approved) cards. It also offers real-time, business-wide spend analysis, tracking subscriptions and office orders.

Competitors include Soldo, Pleo, and Ivalua — but it’s in over 30 countries already. Remaining focused on SMEs, there are over 40k people using the service, from Wefox to Curve.

It raised $56.4m across two Series B rounds, with participation from Eight Roads Ventures.

Ask around Paris for hot startups, and everyone will mention Payfit.

It’s not glamorous. It’s an HR software company focused on simplifying payroll management, expense reports, as well as absences and leave of your employees. But it is the real deal.

The company started with the founders Firmin Zocchetto, Ghislain de Fontenay and Florian Fournier translating the ultra-complex French Labour Code into plain computer code and evolved from there.

The company now has more than 3,000 customers in France, Germany, Spain and the UK and is growing fast. In June 2019 the company raised a fresh €70m from Eurazeo and Bpifrance and plans to double its workforce by 2020.

Lydia scored France its largest fintech round in history, raising $86m in its Series B in December 2020. Led by Accel and supported by Tencent, the round brought its total fundraise to $131m.

The app allows people to pay each other quickly and easily, helping coin the phrase “Je te fais un Lydia” — I’ll Lydia you. Now it offers debit cards and direct deposit capabilities, and recorded 100% growth in volumes in 2020. Now it services 4m customers.

However, it pulled out of the UK earlier in the year, we’re keeping an eye on any international moves. It also plans to be profitable by late 2021 — and if that’s not aiming high enough, it reportedly hopes to be France’s first fintech unicorn.

It’s also on our list of French fintechs to watch post-Brexit.

Read our intelligence report on the French tech revolution to find out more.

BlaBlaCar has been around since 2006 and is one of France’s first unicorns (valued at over $1bn). The service connects drivers traveling from one city to another with travelers headed the same way, and operates across Europe and markets such as Russia and Mexico.

Drivers can’t really profit much, as the price for a passenger is only supposed to cover petrol and general wear and tear, so the company has not faced the same regulatory scrutiny as ride-hailing companies such as Uber.

The carpooling app, valued at €1.6bn, is expanding into long-distance bus journeys, where it faces stiff competition from fellow European FlixBus, amongst others.

The company has already acquired Ouibus, a bus operator traveling between big cities, and Busfor, an eastern European bus booking platform. It’s also making interesting moves in the shared commuting space with a new(ish) service in France, BlaBlaLines.

Further reading: Blablacar’s big plan for long-distance buses

Yubo, a Paris-based startup created by 27-year-old Sacha Lazimi, is tailored to teenagers and young adults, promising a better experience than Snapchat or TikTok thanks to more chatting and less passive scrolling.

Lazimi is convinced that digital natives are hungry for online interactions that focus on just having a nice time with peers — with no influencers and followers, likes to try and gather, or online showing off to do.

“The point isn’t to gain followers or even to make new friends — it’s just to share a moment in real-time with similar people,” Lazimi tells Sifted. “It’s about live social interaction.”

And so far teenagers seem to be enjoying it. Yubo launched in October 2015 and recruited 5m users in the first year.

Further reading: Who’s Yubo? Europe’s Snapchat for teens has 40m users

Alsid has built a reputation by focusing on a niche in the otherwise crowded cybersecurity space: the so-called active directory, which is used by a vast majority of large corporations to manage identities.

In short, the startup specialises in securing the parts of computer networks that say who can access what data, which hackers obviously love to target as a way to get to confidential information.

The company has signed on the likes of Sanofi, Accor and Orange as customers, and in 2019 raised $15m to fund its international expansion, from its existing presence in France and Hong Kong.

Alsid has nearly tripled its teams over the past year. On that point, being French is a clear advantage: the talent pool of mathematicians and scientists is ranked among Europe’s best, and has helped foster the country's cybersecurity expertise.

Cofounders Emmanuel Gras and Luc Delsalle are actually great examples of the virtuous circle in the ecosystem. Before creating Alsid in 2016, they both worked as security auditors at France’s national cybersecurity agency ANSSI, and before that attended reputed engineering and IT universities.

In January 2020, Paris-based Qonto raised a whopping €104m in its Series C round — at the time this was the largest ever funding round for a French fintech.

Its been hiring all of 2020, its services are used by 120k companies, and its latest round was funded by Tencent, Peter Thiel's Valar Ventures and more. And according to Hadrien Comte of Gaia Capital Partners, Qonto and Shine are responsible for France's emergence as a 'prosumer' leader, i.e. attractive to professionals over consumers.

It’s also on our list of French fintechs to watch post-Brexit.

Read our intelligence report on the French tech revolution to find out more.

The Paris-based cryptocurrency security startup was founded in 2014, and its distinctive, USB-style and easy-to-use hardware wallets (which store private keys) — and are a standard in the industry.

So far it’s raised $88m in VC money, including from Draper Espirit, CapHorn Invest and FirstMark Capital.

But in 2019 the company experienced a break-in, which led to a leak of 9.5k detailed customer records and 1m email addresses. In the cryptocurrency community, where trust is paramount, this loss of information is still impacting the company. Though it didn’t directly impact customers’ assets, some users still fear for their physical safety.

Its closest competitor is Trezor, which also has a bigger hardware wallet.

"October’s on our list of French fintechs to watch post-Brexit.

For in-depth analysis of the French tech ecosystem, read the latest issue of The Sift report."

Memo Bank’s on our list of French fintechs to watch post-Brexit.

For in-depth analysis of the French tech ecosystem, read the latest issue of The Sift report.

"Banking for under-18s is a hot topic, and elsewhere on this list you’ll find Gimi and goHenry designed for younger children. Pixpay is the French card for teenagers, filling the awkward gap between pocket money and grown up money management.

It’s competing against the lies of Osper and recently launched Revolut Youth in one of the most interesting areas of fintech that we’re pretty sure will boom in 2021.

From marketing using influencers to rumours of a TikTok spinoff payments app, we’re keeping an eye on how the French contingent will negotiate the changes.

It’s also on our list of French fintechs to watch post-Brexit.

Read our intelligence report on the French tech revolution to find out more."