An app to live with the times
The birth of SailGrib starts from a statement by Henri Laurent, the company's founder, on the return of the Transquadra 2011/2012: at the time, there was no routing application for smartphones. He is convinced that the future is there and not in PC solutions as he used them for his race. He is therefore taking advantage of a change in his professional life to launch and develop a first mobile weather application in 2013. It is quickly followed by more and more precise routing. The company SailGrib is finally created to distribute the product end 2015.
Reaching investors
SailGrib has today decided to join the French Tech of La Rochelle. A national label supporting start-ups, French Tech runs its entrepreneur network and makes it known. For Henri Laurent, it is a way to gain notoriety among boaters and investors. "Thanks to French Tech, we should gain visibility and benefit from a good image with investors." The objective is to be able to finance new software developments.
Continuing growth
With more than 300 000 applications already downloaded, SailGrib already reaches a large public, mainly amateurs. While France accounts for 40% of downloads, 30% come from the rest of Europe and 10% from the United States. The system of mobile applications makes it possible to quickly reach a worldwide nautical and sailing market.
With a turnover which doubles each year, SailGrib shows a beautiful growth which Henri Laurent intends to pursue by new developments.
Future developments
While cartography was the last major project, by signing agreements with SHOM and UKHO to offer a wide coverage of the coasts, Henri Laurent now wishes to tackle race monitoring. He also wants to work on the development of the application to different media.
