The Microsoft ScaleUp program is designed for Series A startups and offers access to sales, marketing and technical support. Eligible startups partake in the immersive program at one of our seven global locations followed by ongoing support from a dedicated team of success managers. One of the ScaleUp locations is Microsoft ScaleUp Berlin, where a dedicated team around Managing Director Iskender Dirik twice a year supports a batch of up to 10 startups with coaching, training and technical support. In this blog series we will introduce one of the participating startups from our third batch each Tuesday and Thursday.
Scortex was founded by a team of four: Aymeric Pontbriand, Christophe Raix, Nathanael Hania and Serge Zloto. The startup brings artificial intelligence into the heart of factories.
Scortex’s deep-learning platform provides state-of-the-art performance and robust vision solutions for automated quality intelligence. Or as Aymeric Pontbriand, CEO of Scoretex, explains it to his grandparents: “The quality of every product coming out of a factory is essential for its manufacturer.” That is why Scoretex provides “new eyes” on the production lines. “By using artificial intelligence, we are able to automate complex visual inspection of the production. Thanks to our solution, our customers can remove defective products from the production and gain insights on their quality issues”, says Pontbriand.
“The ScaleUp program is, most importantly, a community of amazing entrepreneurs and members of the Microsoft team. Sharing experiences with them has been so valuable”, says Pontbriand. The biggest challenge for Scortex before entering the ScaleUp program was to meet their customers’ requirements in terms of size: “Our customers are very large enterprises which expect us to be able to scale rapidly. The ScaleUp program has helped us to accelerate our partnership with Microsoft and target common customers to sell together”, says Pontbriand.
Have a look at our video interview with Aymeric Pontbriand, CEO at Scortex to learn more about the startup’s vision:
Pontbriand’s advice for other startups and founders: “Microsoft’s new partnership strategy is probably the most mature of all existing programs for startups. If your product is built on top of or if it complements a Microsoft product you should apply for ScaleUp.”