Nacim Ben­sakhria, a 2022 UTC grad­u­ate major­ing in com­put­er engi­neer­ing and spe­cial­iz­ing in data min­ing, found­ed the start­up Apoly in 2024, com­bin­ing his two pas­sions: engi­neer­ing and event planning.

After earn­ing his high school diplo­ma, Nacim Ben­sakhria didn’t hes­i­tate for long between enrolling in a prepara­to­ry class or seek­ing admis­sion to UTC. What moti­vat­ed his choice? “It was the free­dom we had to choose cours­es, the vari­ety and qual­i­ty of the cur­ricu­lum and the project-based activ­i­ties that allow us to put every­thing you learn in the­o­ry into practice—which wasn’t the phi­los­o­phy of the prepara­to­ry class­es.”

It’s also the rich­ness it brings us, par­tic­u­lar­ly in terms of inter­per­son­al skills, by immers­ing us in the atmos­phere of a class of near­ly 400 stu­dents rather than a class of 30. Final­ly, it’s the choice of cours­es, where we found our­selves along­side stu­dents from all kinds of back­grounds, espe­cial­ly in those ded­i­cat­ed to the human­i­ties, such as eco­nom­ics, com­mu­ni­ca­tion, and mar­ket­ing,” he says.

His years at UTC were, in his view, also very enrich­ing thanks to the vibran­cy of stu­dent life. The proof? The stu­dent society’s mot­to: there’s life after class. “So, start­ing in my first semes­ter, I joined the Imag­i­nar­i­um Fes­ti­val and then Déci­bels, the asso­ci­a­tion han­dling sound and light­ing for all events. That’s where I dis­cov­ered this world that appealed to me and observed the chal­lenges inher­ent in these pro­fes­sions. I real­ized that there were man­age­ment, plan­ning and over­sight issues involv­ing both equip­ment and peo­ple. I then won­dered how the major play­ers in this sec­tor han­dled things before real­iz­ing they weren’t doing much bet­ter,” he recounts.

He sees this obser­va­tion as an oppor­tu­ni­ty that will allow him to com­bine his two pas­sions in the future: engi­neer­ing and event tech­nol­o­gy, although the health cri­sis affect­ing this sector—the first to shut down and the last to reopen—is call­ing its via­bil­i­ty into question.

For his end-of-stud­ies intern­ship, he joined the R&D depart­ment at RIMES Tech­nolo­gies, a com­pa­ny spe­cial­iz­ing in finan­cial data aggre­ga­tion. He was drawn to the department’s inti­mate size and the team’s inter­na­tion­al makeup.

At the end of his intern­ship, he returned to his idea of a start­up ded­i­cat­ed to the events indus­try. “I ben­e­fit­ed, dur­ing my senior year, from UTC’s Elite Entre­pre­neur­ship  pro­gramme. Thanks to coach­ing from expe­ri­enced fac­ul­ty mem­bers, Véronique Mis­seri and Bruno Ramond, I was able to refine the idea, turn it into a prod­uct, and define the goals I was pur­su­ing with this project. I also received finan­cial sup­port from the UTC Foun­da­tion for Inno­va­tion and guid­ance from the iTer­ra incu­ba­tor and the Hauts-de-France Region (HDFID) to turn the project into a busi­ness. In par­tic­u­lar, I com­plet­ed a train­ing pro­gramme that allowed me to acquire the skills nec­es­sary for run­ning a busi­ness, such as finan­cial engi­neer­ing, com­mu­ni­ca­tion, and sales tech­niques,” he emphasizes.

That’s how, in 2024, Nacim Ben­sakhria decid­ed to launch Apoly. “After an ini­tial R&D phase, TechOS—a port­man­teau of ‘tech­nol­o­gy’ and ‘oper­at­ing system’—was born. It’s a man­age­ment and trace­abil­i­ty solu­tion pow­ered by IoT (chips) and AI, designed to free up pro­fes­sion­als’ time and reduce their men­tal load so they can focus on their core busi­ness, while opti­miz­ing the lifes­pan of expen­sive, con­stant­ly on-the-move equip­ment fleets. The appli­ca­tion is mod­u­lar and helps stream­line time-con­sum­ing, tedious, and low-val­ue-added tasks—whether in plan­ning, inven­to­ry man­age­ment, or maintenance—while ensur­ing the trace­abil­i­ty of the equip­ment “mak­ing them inter­con­nect­ed,” he explains.

At the same time, he con­tin­ues to expand his net­work by pro­vid­ing tech­ni­cal direc­tion and over­all pro­duc­tion man­age­ment for events and con­certs such as the Star Acad­e­my tour at the Zénith in Amiens (12 semi-trail­ers of equip­ment and more than 100 pro­fes­sion­als mobi­lized in a sin­gle day) and the July 14 con­cert in Valen­ci­ennes fea­tur­ing the artist Gims, which drew near­ly 60 000 spectators.

This solu­tion already has its first part­ner client: the Le Tigre per­for­mance venue and exhi­bi­tion hall and is cur­rent­ly being imple­ment­ed with larg­er clients such as the Zénith in Amiens and the Paris La Défense Are­na (Europe’s largest venue with 40 000 seats).

Bio-notes:

• 2022: Project launch and incubation
• 2024: Deeptech cer­ti­fi­ca­tion by BPI France
• 2025: First part­ner client

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