Lumi’in method to grow at the speed of light

Innovation

Devenir rapidement une ETI pour s’imposer comme un leader mondial de l’éclairage public solaire, c’est l’ambition de François Vaute, fondateur du concepteur et fournisseur de lampadaire hybrides et connectés basé à Malijai. Ange Porteno

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It is in the middle of the Alpes-de-Haute-Provence that the shortcomings of tomorrow.Installed in the Malijai ecoparc, Lumi'in designs, assembles and distributes autonomous solar lampposts since 2014."We started from an existing technology trying to make it smarter," says François Vaute, the founder of the start-up.This results in autonomous lampposts capable of being connected to capture the level of pollution, detect the amount of rain fallen in order to cancel an automatic watering or launch an alert if a river comes out of its bed.For the moment, the start-up provides municipalities throughout France, but also prosecution donors like Vinci or Eiffage.Internationally, customers focus on European border countries and more and more in French -speaking Africa.Today Lumi'in has 7 employees and a turnover of 400,000 euros."We want to become a world leader," warns François Vaute.This 44 -year -old Vauclusian prepares for a fundraising to expand his research and development workforce, his commercial sector as well as improve production tools.The objective being to multiply by two the number of employees.

Innovations and lobby

"We have doubled our turnover and we are leaving on the same bases since the start of the year.We are in the process of becoming an SME and hope to become an ETI within 3 or 4 years ", aims the entrepreneur.To gain visibility, Lumi'N accumulates different labels and patents like Greentech Verte, awarded by the Ministry of the Environment, or Flexgrid.The latter concerns a project led by the Regional Council and the Capenergies competitiveness center which aims to deploy smart electrical networks on a large scale."We are one of the bricks of this project which is a life -size test, welcomes François Vaute.We work on a hybrid model that would be autonomous when the batteries are loaded and then connected to the classic network otherwise ".The extension of the process for buildings is one of the other development axes, as well as the use of lampposts as a source of energy to recharge mobile phones for example or to kill insects thanks to a vacuum cleaner.A prototype is currently being tested in Aix-en-Provence.In addition to trying to innovate, the founder of Lumi'in also put on lobbying.To gain visibility, the Bas-Alpine company has joined the Cleantech nursery of Arbois in Aix-en-Provence."But we will stay in Malijai," insists François Vaute.The start-up participates in many fair, she was notably present in January at CES in Las Vegas.The West of the United States is one of the markets targeted to develop in the same way as South America, Africa and the whole of Europe.

Ange Porteno

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