Founded in 2018 by Yann Echeverria and based in Bidart (Pyrénées-Atlantiques), the start-up Elqano has developed a collaborative software solution that identifies employees' areas of expertise to facilitate and accelerate knowledge sharing between employees of the same company. On December 15, the company announced that it had raised €900,000 in funding from Side Capital and banking partners. During the health crisis, telecommuting became widespread, and companies noted a lack of cohesion among employees: 56% of employees felt disconnected from their colleagues, according to a study conducted by Capgemini "The Future of Work: from remote to hybrid". Elqano's solution allows them to interact and share their knowledge. After a first round of funding in 2021, the start-up was integrated into the MicrosoftForStartups program, a strong technological validation, and its team grew from 2 to around 10 employees, including a majority of senior experts. It then officially became a Microsoft partner and its solution was integrated into Microsoft Teams. Microsoft Teams data combined with Elqano's AI algorithms allow to create new connections between employees working on similar topics without necessarily knowing each other.

AI algorithms and natural language processing

Elqano's AI solution is very easy to use and takes the form of a chatbot, it : - maps, the expertise and skills of each person by AI without the need to fill them in; - optimizes and decompartmentalizes the sharing of expertise by connecting employees who work in similar fields of expertise without knowing each other; - positively impacts collective productivity, improves production quality and saves time for employees; - is fully integrated into the leading communication tool Microsoft Teams and can be deployed to thousands of users quickly. In addition, customers are trained and supported by Customer Success Managers and IT staff. In concrete terms, a company employee can ask any question: the solution identifies the competent employee to answer his or her questions and provide him or her with answers in real time, wherever he or she may be, within his or her entity, in another subsidiary or even in another country. Yann Echeverria explains:

"Mobilizing the expertise and knowledge of each employee is one of the main priorities of companies in recent years. Collective intelligence is an essential lever to accompany the transformation of companies and create sustainable performance. My goal is to make each employee more autonomous and fulfilled in his work by allowing him to access the knowledge of his colleagues without effort.

Thanks to this fundraising, Elqano will recruit new employees to accelerate its growth in Europe and two developers to continue to improve its solution by going further in Natural Language Processing techniques. Renaud Guillerm, Managing Partner, Side Capital, concludes:

"Elqano is a promising French Tech start-up that offers a particular efficient knowledge sharing solution that naturally appealed to us."

Translated from La start-up Elqano annonce une levée de fonds de 900 000 euros

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