The best of French Tech was at BEST OF FRANCE

In recent years we have seen French startups and corporations making huge impacts in the USA. Some of them you discovered in Le French Tech Village during BEST OF FRANCE exhibition on September 26th & 27th 2015 in New York. Some other you should be watching!

Connected devices are here to stay, and Kolibree has created a smart toothbrush that is changing the face of oral health for the whole family. Founded in 2013 in Paris by Thomas Serval and Loïc Cessot, the company was successfully kickstarted for just under $110,000. Kolibree has developed a slim and lightweight connected toothbrush that interacts via Bluetooth to Android and iOS smartphones and tablets to give live feedback on how you’re brushing. What’s more, Kolibree has managed to gamify the toothbrushing experience with its GoPirate game for kids and Coach for adults.

With the cost of healthcare in the United States constantly rising, using a connected device such as Kolibree helps users to prevent costly oral diseases. Also, the application shows you longer term data to highlight areas of underbrushing or neglect. Kolibree won an award for Innovation at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES). Executive VP Christophe Dissaux says, “Expect some exciting updates in the near future.”

Kolibree was on hand at BEST OF FRANCE 2015. Did you stop by for a live demonstration and receive a 50% discount during the event? Come back to tell us how your mouth feel using Kolibree!

Ever been to a business conference or event and come out thinking you would have liked to have networked more or not been too shy to approach other attendees? That’s where French start up Topi comes in with their mobile application which allows people to discover and connect with each other by simply swiping through profiles prioritized by interests seen on your LinkedIn and/or Facebook info. Event hosts can even add helpful content about the event itself (agenda, speakers, maps, custom fields, etc.) and of course track the success of the event with the app analytics.

Topi which comes with Tinder-esque left & right swipe was founded in 2012 and is managed by David Aubespin, Eric Sellin & Eric Francois. They aim to connect people in a random world and their simple-to-use & clean App interface makes this possible. The app is also super easy to sign up with and can be linked (and compliment) your LinkedIn account.

The US market represents a large chunk of Topi’s market although they are also popular in Germany and France. Why the US? Aside from being the largest market for events, two of the guys running Topi are based here in NY (David and Eric F.) and they said “it was a natural market to target first. We have relationships here and we know the key players”. Topi are going international and had their 1st event in South Africa last week!

Topi was hosting BEST OF FRANCE event on their application. Did you get signed up?

About the event they said they were most looking forward to “Meeting great people. We’re excited to continue our collaboration with the French community in the US.  Best of France is THE festival showcasing this French-American unity.  Topi is very much a representation of this dual identity and so for us it is a great fit. We hope users had a great time using the app – connecting with like-minded people, staying in touch and reviewing the great Festival content (Wine tasting, fashion shows, parties, etc.)”

Next up is Bewell (bw) connect, part of the Visiomed Group® lead by President and CEO Eric Sebban. Bewell specializes in connected health and security products. The  Bewell connect application acts as a platform to connect various apps (such as bw myCoach and bw my thermo) with bw smart devices to track and help improve individual health and lifestyle, all while storing the data on the cloud. The app can be used by multiple users in your family and the data can even be shared with your doctor online or live. An example of this in action is MyTensio, the first smart and connected automatic blood pressure monitor, which wirelessly monitors your heartbeat and blood pressure so you (the user) can have peace of mind on a day-to-day basis, and even share the information with a doctor. Find out more on all their connected products.

Bewell will be joining us for the Best of France exhibition

Meet Lima, a multiple device storage technology. Think of a faster Dropbox without fees and a killer app, and you’ll be thinking right! Lima is the brainchild of Severin Marcombes and Gawen Arab and was founded in Paris. They currently have a team of 20 employees and consultants worldwide.

Lima has created a product that combines powerful apps and their “Smart Adapter” to allow the user to access all of their information, at anytime, across any device wherever they are. Imagine you’re halfway around the world and need to pull a file or image. All you have to do is open the app which connects you to your external hard drive stored at home with access to all your different devices’ storage. In addition, Lima enables your devices to benefit from the memory of the hard drive, so essentially you can have a phone with 8 terabytes of memory.

This product is tremendously popular and nothing highlights this more than Lima’s Kickstarter campaign that was backed by 12,840 people and raised $1.2m from a goal of $69,000. Not that you would be surprised, Lima took home two innovation awards from last year’s CES; in both the ‘Computer accessories’ and ‘Software and mobile apps’ categories.

We love technology that draws inspiration from retro tech and that’s exactly what co-founders Clément Perrot and David Zhang did to create Prynt. After spending an afternoon playing with an original Polaroid camera, they decided they wanted to recreate the experience of sharing physical photos with friends through smartphones and that’s exactly what they did! Their first product, the Prynt case which raised over $1.5m on Kickstarter, allows you to clip in your phone and then take and print photos in under a minute without the need for WiFi or a Bluetooth connection.

So why the US market? Prynt told us it’s ‘It’s the largest consumer market worldwide, and we also felt with the history of instant photography in the U.S., consumers would react strongly, which they have!’ and there’s little more evidence of this than the 9000 backers they received in their Kickstarter campaign

The Prynt cases, which will be officially launched in November, come in black, white, pink and blue, and are compatible with a variety of Samsung Galaxy and iPhone models (check out their website for more details.) What’s more, we haven’t mentioned our favorite feature yet, their application allows you to make short videos to capture a moment as photo prints. This gets stored on the cloud and at a later date the application can recognize your photo and play the video to your friends.

Pre-order the Prynt instant camera for your smartphone on their website now