Orange Commits to French Startups with Procurement Strategy

Orange is working to break down the structural barriers startups often face. The company is doing so by stepping up its direct procurement policy with French startups, using its position to open doors for them and accelerate the inclusion of French technology solutions in its B2B service catalogue. 

The telco operator group’s push to reduce these barriers involves providing industrial solutions to help tackle lengthy contracting processes, limited access to corporate customers and a lack of corporate customers. The former dynamic is often problematic for startups as they cannot afford to burn through their cash reserves while waiting to hook a large contract.

The best of both worlds

Announcing its commitment to French startups in a company statement, Orange says that its goal is “to combine the operational excellence and strength of a major international group with the agility, simplicity and efficiency expected by entrepreneurs”.

Orange claims that this approach is already yielding operational synergies and resulting in “concrete commercial successes” for its partners, including:

• ANOZR WAY: specialises in measuring and managing human cyber risk. It is being used by Orange Business to complement its multimodal threat detection capabilities.
• CircularPlace: working with Orange to help companies better manage unused IT equipment.
• H Company: focuses on Agentic AI models
• Kerys: claims to offer a new approach to secure virtualisation.

Pushing ahead on trust

Along with its buy, distribute and integrate strategy for French startups, Orange is further asserting its position as a partner of the French Tech Mission by expanding the scope of Orange Ventures, its venture capital fund. 

Orange Ventures will now support the development of the group’s trust services for consumers and enterprises, on top of accelerating investments in AI, trusted cloud solutions, cybersecurity, health and defence.

“France must see the emergence of startups capable of reaching industrial scale, sustaining their solutions and rapidly winning their markets,” says Christel Heydemann, CEO of Orange.

“Orange is fully embracing its role as a catalyst in this dynamic. In close cooperation with the French Tech Mission, we are making concrete industrial levers available to the ecosystem – our purchasing volume, our commercial strength and our integration expertise – to accelerate the expansion of trusted French solutions.”

“Our strategic priority is to support the growth trajectory of French startups,” adds Julie Huguet, Director of the French Tech Mission. 

“To achieve this, access to customers, trusted relays and smoother sales cycles are essential.

“The partnership with Orange shows that by mobilising the ecosystem as a whole, we can generate tangible commercial opportunities for our scale-ups and help bring out the future European technology leaders.”