Keen on travelling and convinced that cycling will be one of the most used means of travel in the future, Emmanuel Brault, 2021 graduate of ITEEM, decided to develop Hexplo, a platform for organising cycling trips. With his cycling tourism app, he offers users the chance to create their own itineraries by booking their accommodation and activities online. Right from the launch, his “Voyager à vélo, c’est l’avenir !” (The future is in cycling holidays!) platform proved to be a hit with Internet users. His site racked up 30,000 visits in a single week, and his first video on LinkedIn was a real success with over
1 million views.
His mission is to democratise cycling to enable all audiences to make travelling journeys that are more ecological, human, sporting and local! To achieve his goals, Emmanuel had to persevere and negotiate to obtain partnerships with Booking, SNCF, Tripadvisor, as well as the sites that reference bivouac (“bivvy”) sites.
“With some partners, it was difficult to find the right contacts to successfully present my offer” explains Emmanuel. “For instance, with Booking, I only managed to secure the partnership after four consecutive refusals! So I learned very quickly that resilience is a must when doing business.”
To continue to expand, Emmanuel will soon be backed by a team with complementary skills in order to add new functionalities to his platform and increase its visibility. To finance future projects, he relies on subscriptions to the application (€30 per year) and, before long, on investors.
“You’ve got to believe in your dreams. I learned to learn at ITEEM, and now I am thriving because I still learn a lot with my own company!” says Emmanuel.