Announcement of the winners of the Next Innov 2024 Prize by Banque Populaire and Maddyness

The 7^th edition of the Next Innov prize showcased a number of outstanding companies while simultaneously positioning Banque Populaire as a key player in the ecosystem of innovation and support for pioneering businesses.

Selected from a pool of more than 600 applicants, 11 finalists met on May 27 to pitch their solutions to, and answer questions put to them by, a selection panel chaired, this year, by Augustin Boulot, Executive Director of B Lab France.

After deliberating, the panel announced the winners of the 2024 competition, which is now open to innovative SMEs and not exclusively to start-ups as in previous editions, and includes a new impact criterion for all the cash awards:

• First Prize: Water Horizon, a reversible, mobile thermal battery that recovers and transports waste heat from industrial processes.
• Sovtech Prize (sovereignty, one of the competition’s other new features): NETRI , which enables the healthcare industry to grow human mini-organisms on a chip making it possible to predict the clinical outcomes of a drug.
• SME prize: ECOSUN Innovations, innovative Plug and Play solar solutions for mobile use.
• Internationalization category : Fruggr by Digital4Better, a solution helping companies to manage their responsible digital transition.  
• HealthTech category (another in new feature in 2024) and the Public Vote category: Alia Santé, a platform that generates synthetic data to promote the growth of AI used in healthcare.

The awards were presented in the presence of major players in the ecosystem of entrepreneurship and innovation, thereby underscoring the clear need for collective working practices to foster the emergence of major French technology champions.

In its capacity as the No.1 bank for businesses (for the past 14 years), a financial institution created by and for entrepreneurs, Banque Populaire is a natural partner for innovative companies.