Incubated at KEDGE, the startup Oxycar, organises carpooling among colleagues

Before arriving at Kedge in 2016, I was pursuing a traditional engineering training programme (France, Germany, Switzerland). I spent a year in each country, in full immersion, to study computer engineering, renewable and nuclear energy industries. During that time, I learned to adapt to different lifestyles and the cultures in different countries. At the beginning, we might think that a country that shares a border with France won't be that much a change for us. But in the end, it was a real life lesson during those three years, with Endress-Hauser on their Swiss-German and French sites, where I provided IT services and implemented innovations. 

 

This tri-national experience opened me up to entrepreneurship, innovation, and strategy. Being able to bring together the vision of the three countries in the BtoB and create concepts from the mix between the three cultures made me want to stop working in programming and shift to this idea of tri-national innovation, which I carry with me today. 

 

It's also during this time that the Start'up Oxycar began to see the light. I was driven to make a difference, even though I was only 21 years old. Today, I am 24 and our team has slowly started to realise how lucky we have been to have come this far already. Then, there was Kedge. When I discovered the business engineering program in Toulon, I fell in love. I could keep everything I learned on the technical side, and link that to management and marketing, to perfect my start-up idea and accelerate its development. I discovered things from all horizons, met people with unusual backgrounds, and gained access to a network. In my view, a school's goal is to provide us with so much more than teaching subjects and providing us with knowledge, even though these are important. 

 

In my personal opinion, a school distinguishes itself through its ability to support, help, and ensure the development of its students. That it want I liked about being at Kedge. The first year was the hardest for me. No work-study programme, a start-up that was still being built and looking for its identity, living costs... To manage financially, like many other students, I was working three jobs at the same time, by managing projects for service companies, doing consulting work, and working as a business finder. 

 

Currently, I am finishing the first year of my Masters and in parallel to my studies, and the start-up, I obtained a work-study contract with Amadeus. First, I worked as a Manager for client experience in the "Marketing & Development" Department, and then after 6 months, I started working on strategy in the new "Service Excellence Governance" department. This has been a unique opportunity for me to discover a large company that choses a start-up and gives it full liberty to work to move forward one of the company's "pain points". Our start-up has also gathered steam, and was called on by the French government to work participate and work on the new laws on mobility at the end of 2017. This was a unique experience where I learned about my job in public relations, and what on the other side of the Atlantic they call lobbying.

 

Oxycar is first and foremost a risk I have taken with my two associates (Félix Kletti and Vincent Ostermann). After getting up, taking my car, going to work and sitting through morning and evening traffic, day in and day out, I started observing the other cars. And, like a lot of other people, I started to think that it's a little crazy that we are all in our cars alone, but headed in the same direction, the same economic/industrial zones. Every car only had one person in it. I would arrive at work and notice the same thing. All the cars only had one person in them. Yet, I knew my colleagues, we would have coffee together in the morning, talk about our lives over lunch, organise parties together, and we all lived nearby.

 

What would happen if we filled a car among colleagues? The question seemed simple. The answers too. We would have to fill up with petrol less, we wouldn't have to spend so much time thinking about our next car expenses, and in the end I would feel less alone in my car, listening to the radio over and over again.

 

 

To sum up, we would first start to try to understand how mobility worked with companies. How long did it take on average to get there? Were people late, tired due to the daily commute? Did it have an impact on work? The idea was mostly to show that a company's mobility depended on a lot of things. Our solution isn't just about "carpooling", its a whole host of services, reimbursement rates, trajectory plans for companies, CSR plans. A real digital HR tool that enables a company's HR department to offer a real added value to their employees and unions by providing them a win-win solution. 

 

We often say that on one side there are the leaders, and on the other side are the employees, that there is a disconnect between the two. But we made the choice, with our current clients, to close this gap in part. The strength of our project is that it doesn't cost companies a thing to install the solution (no, no you aren't dreaming! We were also surprised at first...). The only cost to the companies will be the grant they give their employees, via our platform. Let me go ahead and tell our HR friends that these "grants, are not considered as in-kind advantages for employees, and to employees, that the reimbursements are in net from taxes (less paperwork, more happiness).

 

The project has been well received: we had a great article published on Rmsnews and won the 2017 BNI prize for digital innovation. You'll see other articles about our activities very soon! 

 

We clearly have no shortage of projects at the moment. We are receiving requests from all ends to respond to the growing needs of companies and public authorities in charge of the mobility issue. We are interested in blockchain for the future, because we have already identified and are producing a "trustworthy" mobility system, that will be very simple for users. And of course, we want to expand abroad! We are closely looking at boarder countries, countries such as Germany/Switzerland are in real need of mobility solutions, similarly to the industrial areas in our regions (I am Alsatian!). And on a personal note, getting my diploma of course! 

 

 

I would say that most of all Kedge provided me with a "framework" to allow me to develop. I was able to share my ideas with recognised professionals, and I appreciated that they would really challenge me. What I previously considered a lack of confidence and a form of weakness, I now see as one of my qualities. I understood (even though it wasn't always easy) that challenging yourself on a daily basis is a great way to maintain perspective on certain intense moments and events that we go through. My evolution at Kedge, was mostly on the "inside", I learned to dare, to specialise but also remain diverse in my activities so that I don't lose sight of my objectives. And most importantly, I found people that trust in my success. In the end, its these same people that enabled me to keep on going. 

 

The Business Nursery also gave me the opportunity to connect with the world of lawyers and accountants. In addition to fundamental subjects related to entrepreneurship, I gained what I call "the toolbox" to compensate for my weaknesses in certain areas. It gave me the opportunity to develop and learn from my mistakes. It is also a place to meet professionals and earn the status of student-entrepreneur. 

 

Well, I don't really feel like I can give advice to alumni, since I am myself still a student and have a lot to learn. But, as a general thought, there is no age limit to become an entrepreneur. Whether it is as a founder, an advisor, or a financer, the most important thing to understand is that the entrepreneur universe is a shock of adrenaline that teaches us a lot about more about ourselves than about the outside world, that we need to find ourselves and find a goal. I feel like this is one way to do that. Because in the end, if a project has to stop for whatever reason, you have to see all the work that went into it, the skills are recognised by other professionals, you gain a network, and this unique ability to innovate, I think will be a rare skill that employers and companies will look for.

 

We don't bite! Don't hesitate to come ask us questions, learn about what we do. I even heard that there is an email and phone number for that! 😉 (mathieu.gardin@oxy-car.com)

 

To give you a preview and an idea of what the future product will look like https://beta.oxy-car.com/ and to understand our activity from the point of vue of companies: http://rmsnews.com/Oxycar-covoiturage-quotidien-simplifi%C3%A9