Communicative noise-cancelling earpieces for noisy environments

Noé, a friend of one of our founders, lost 20% of his hearing and suffered a perforation of his eardrum during a concert. Antoine, co-founder of Safehear, decided to use his skills in electronics to improve existing hearing protection.

Antoine entered a competition, Antoine entered a student entrepreneurship contest where he presented his idea for a connected earpiece for the music world. Héléna, the current co-founder, joined his team and the adventure began! Safehear won the Innovative Business Model award at the end of this competition. After some reflection, Héléna and Antoine decided to turn Safehear into a real startup by joining the 1Kubator Lyon incubation program.

After a market study, Safehear pivots to address a need expressed by industry: workers' hearing protection isolates them and does not allow them to communicate in noise. This problem causes accidents, sometimes serious, and long-term occupational illnesses. The need is validated: Safehear began developing its first prototype to address this public health issue. Safehear won the UPICIL call for projects from the APICIL insurance group and received a grant and support from Valoritech.

Safehear signs a partnership with the INRIA Lyon research center and launches research on communication networks with the AGORA team. The start-up also joins ST Microelectronics' Innovation Booster program, which offers accommodation at the Grenoble site and technical support for the development and industrialization of prototypes.

Safehear is awarded the Deep Tech label by BPI France, giving it access to significant public funding. A first round of financing begins.

An industrial partnership is signed with Axandus, a subsidiary of the automotive manufacturer EfI Automotive, to begin industrialization of the first product. The functional prototype is tested in several industrial and construction companies.

The team grows! We recruit engineers and a marketing and sales team. The first fundraising is finalized and reaches 540K €.

Our protection now has a name: Louis! This is a turning point for Safehear as product demonstrations at industrial companies accelerate and orders for delivery to customers in early 2022 are in place!