Publicis Groupe (Paris:PUB) has launched Publicis90, a global initiative to provide funding and mentoring for 90 innovative startups.
The call for entries, which was launched in January 2016, was a success with over 3,500 applications received from more than 130 countries by entrepreneurs, students and by Publicis Groupe employees.
These 3,500 projects were put through a stringent and completely anonymous selection process to identify the 90 winners, i.e. less than 3% of all applicants.
Among the 90 projects selected, 23% of all projects coming from the USA, 18% from France and 14% from the United Kingdom, followed by Germany (7%), Israel (6%) and India (3%).
Approximately 16% of these projects are from emerging countries.
25 projects were chosen by entrepreneurs from within Publicis Groupe, while the remaining 65 projects were submitted by startups already in existence, by students or budding entrepreneurs.
Sectors represented include marketing and communications, healthcare, fintech, retailing, blockchains, virtual reality (VR), Big Data, and the Internet of Things (IOT).
The top three startups are:
– Emerald Medical Applications, an Israeli startup specialized in dermatology that uses image recognition technology for faster, easier detection of skin cancers.
– Recast.Ai, a French collaborative platform allowing developers to create a bot and implement it on any messaging service.
– Wiseye, an Israeli startup specialized in retail and the Internet of Things providing retail and store chains with a customer behavior platform that draws in data from various sources like point-of-sales, wireless devices and other available inputs.
Each will receive an investment ranging from €10k to €500k and support from a mentor chosen from among Publicis Groupe’s experts in digital, marketing and communications. With the support of the Henner Group, the winning projects will also receive insurance support for one year.
FinSMEs
04/07/2016