Turkish ventures displayed their capabilities and latest products at Europe’s biggest startup and technology event, attracting thousands of companies and investors to Paris this week.
VivaTechnology, or VivaTech for short, ran from Wednesday to Saturday. Sanofi attended the expo with three startups participating in its entrepreneurship program PharmUp, which supports startups aiming to create innovative solutions in the healthcare field.
The "Invest in Türkiye" booth, set up by the Presidential Investment Office, gathered as many as 16 startups under a single roof at the Paris Expo Porte de Versailles.
Highlighting the importance of the growing Türkiye-France relations, Ambassador to Paris Ali Onaner stressed the opportunity to display the capabilities and opportunities his country offers to foreign investors.
"We are pleased to host leading French investors and businesspeople, together with our Presidential Investment Office executives, to show French business people how attractive Türkiye is for foreign investors and to introduce our successful entrepreneurs participating in the VivaTech fair," Onaner noted.
"We hope that this gathering will further increase the interest of French companies among the largest investors in Türkiye. We believe that the development of our political relations with France will contribute to the strengthening of our economic relations."
$19 billion trade volume
Addressing a reception attended by French and Turkish business representatives, Burak Dağlıoğlu, the head of the Presidential Investment Office, underscored the economic cooperation between Türkiye and France and investment opportunities.
"In 2022, France became Türkiye’s seventh largest export and eighth largest import partner, with bilateral trade volume reaching $19 billion. Direct investment inflows from France to Türkiye have exceeded $8 billion since 2002, and approximately 1,700 French companies continue to operate in our country," explained Dağlıoğlu.
"Under the leadership of our president, as we enter the second century of our republic, the 'Türkiye Century,' we continue our efforts to invite international investors, especially from France, to our country with all our energy."
Health care startups
Three health care startups accepted into Sanofi’s entrepreneurship program PharmUp left their mark at VivaTech and offered them opportunities to meet potential investors and set up networks with other entrepreneurs in the global market.
Among these, Hekimanne features an application that allows families to track their children’s health data and a garment that measures temperature during a fever.
Labenko exhibited a robot that eliminates waiting in blood testing laboratories in state hospitals, while Meddenovo displayed molecular and simulation techniques for drug discovery studies in Türkiye.
These health care startups attracted attention at Paris VivaTech, providing opportunities to meet potential investors and network with other entrepreneurs in the global market.
Meanwhile, Syntonym, an artificial intelligence-based solutions startup supported by Türk Telekom’s corporate venture capital company, TT Ventures, was also among the participating companies at the Paris expo.
Revolutionizing drug design
Meddenovo, the Turkish initiative focused on long-term drug design and modeling of biomolecular systems, claims to be among the prominent startups in the world.
Founded by Ilke Uğur Marion and Antoine Marion, Meddenovo – Drug Discovery has conducted scientific research in drug design and biomolecular system modeling for over 10 years.
Antoine Marion said the company brings together research groups, companies and high-level computational chemistry and simulation techniques for new drug discovery.
"Various and complex diseases and the global pandemic demonstrate the continuous need for innovative transformations in medicine. To effectively meet this need, higher technological inputs are required in drug discovery research," Marion noted.
"At Meddenovo, we are proud to be one of the companies that provide advanced technology solutions in drug design with our software and experienced team of scientists."
Original drug design in Türkiye
Marion also stressed goals that the company looks to achieve in the near future.
"Our priority is to introduce our software that enables drug design with a ‘single click.’ We have been involved in numerous valuable studies regarding original drug development in Türkiye, and many of them were initiated by us. Continuing the journey of these studies towards the clinic is also one of the most important parts of our agenda," he noted.
As of October this year, Marion said the company plans to open a branch in France.
"The ecosystems in Türkiye and France are very different and complement each other in some aspects. We have innovative and high-tech projects that will bring together the advantages of both ecosystems. Each completed project is a candidate to meet the modeling needs in the market," he added.
Marion emphasized that the bioAIM software, at the core of Meddenovo, was initially developed to meet their own needs, as the available software on the market did not fulfill their requirements in the field of drug development.
"There is a balance between speed and accuracy in simulations. To increase speed and work with larger data, one must sacrifice accuracy. For now, there is no other way around it. A significant portion of our competitors is developing software to increase speed further. However, we do not compromise on accuracy and keep the speed low. As a result, we achieve highly accurate results," he explained.
At the same time, Marion said the company didn’t want to lose its ability to work with big data. "This is where our focalYZe module, where we also benefited from the artificial intelligence, comes into play," he noted.
"PharmUp emerged during a period when we were taking steps towards globalization. Globalization and growth are challenging journeys. It’s a path where you can easily get lost without guidance. PharmUp guided us on this path and accelerated our process significantly. It helped us remove obstacles along the way. Its contribution to clarifying our priorities was immense," said Marion.
Instantly measuring children’s fever
Pediatrician Görkem Astarcıoğlu said she launched Hekimanne after witnessing the helplessness experienced by families, stressing she had encountered similar problems among about 200,000 parents due to his expertise.
"While parents strive to become more equipped caregivers as their children grow, they were struggling to archive their health data and measure and monitor body temperature during periods of feverish illnesses. Therefore, I decided to develop the BabyStar mobile health application and the TempStar wearable thermometer," Astarcıoğlu explained.
She says joining PharmUp allowed her to see the big picture from an external perspective, fill in the gaps she couldn’t notice, and turn toward the global market.
"It supported us in being able to attend a technology fair like VivaTech, which I’m sure will be a groundbreaking experience," Astarcıoğlu said.
Highlighting the importance of contributing to raising healthy individuals in light of sustainable global goals worldwide, Astarcıoğlu continued: "We want to provide a solution that breathes new life into the health care system by enabling individuals to take responsibility for archiving their health data, thereby saving money and time spent on the health care system and supporting a less anxious experience during feverish illnesses."
Error-free blood sample collection
Süleyman Sevinç said the Labenko project was influenced by the desire to prevent overcrowding after the then-chief physician of Tepecik Education and Research Hospital, Gökhan Akbulut, observed that patients had to line up three times to provide blood samples.
The project features a robot developed, which Sevinç says has been named Nesli, in memory of his late mother, Neslihan.
"The confusion caused by carrying tubes by hand, chaos in units where multiple queues formed and unpredictable waiting times were causing stress for patients who had to wait for blood tests with an empty stomach," he said.
"Additionally, the timing of those who needed to provide blood samples at certain intervals, such as oral glucose tolerance tests, was not done accurately enough. We developed the system piece by piece with the support of TÜBİTAK/TEYDEB. The produced parts were used at TEAH and some other hospitals," Sevinç noted.
TEYDEB stands for Technology and Innovation Support Programs Directorate of TÜBİTAK, namely the Scientific and Technological Research Council of Türkiye.
The high satisfaction level, Sevinç says, further increased their motivation.
"Finally, we produced and implemented the labeling robot with the support of TÜBİTAK/TEYDEB. There were no longer any queues in the blood collection unit. Before coming to the unit, patients could see the density of the unit through an application and adjust their timing accordingly," he added.
"Unfortunately, my dear mother, Neslihan, couldn’t see the emergence of the robot, but she provided us with great support in our development efforts, so we wanted to thank her in this way."
Sevinç says they developed the KANKA robot, which uses artificial intelligence to check blood samples for pre-analytical errors at the laboratory entrance, with the knowledge they had accumulated in the Phlerobo project.
He also stated that their target market is Europe, especially the United Kingdom.
"PharmUp has been and continues to be an eye-opening experience for us. We understood the perspective of customers and investors regarding our products. Instead of long and potentially boring academic presentations, which we used to make frequently, we started presenting short and easily understandable presentations. We managed to obtain our patent. PharmUp taught us how to prioritize as we transitioned from the startup to the scaling phases," Sevinç noted.
He stated they had conducted market research in the United Kingdom, Germany, France and the Netherlands.
"We started working with a group in the United States and made some exports. Now, while striving to benefit our society primarily with the technologies we have developed, we also aim to provide much-needed foreign currency inflows to our country through exports."