Many employers are looking for ways to get their employees back into the office. A young Quebec company has a solution for them.
GPHY has developed a platform that helps companies to manage hybrid work more effectively.
“Our ELIA platform allows employees to book a workplace online and also see when colleagues are present. They are therefore more motivated to return to the office, knowing that other members of their team will be there,” explains Anthony Blais, who co-founded the company with three partners in 2018.
According to several surveys, travel time and employees leaving offices are the top reasons given by employees for preferring to work remotely.
According to the young entrepreneur, companies that use ELIA are seeing a 20% increase in office work.
The platform also provides companies with various data on the actual occupancy of their workplaces.
This occupancy measurement, which uses intelligent sensors developed by GPHY, saves users rental costs, according to the young entrepreneur.
growing need
Anthony Blais and his three partners were studying engineering physics at Université Laval when they decided to start their company in 2018 to create intelligent infrastructure for managing office space. Then came the pandemic that forced GPHY to take a turn.
“We are shocked to see employers being forced to adopt teleworking. We quickly saw the opportunity to develop new solutions to create the working environments of tomorrow,” says Anthony Blais.
After several months of development, GPHY launched its ELIA platform in June 2022. The young scion already counts more than ten companies among his customers.
“Every day we have new contacts from companies interested in using our solutions,” says Anthony Blais.
GPHY also just closed a funding round that brought in a variety of investors, including asterX, a Quebecor-backed venture capital cell that opened the doors to large companies.
strategic partnership
GPHY has entered into a strategic partnership with Quebecor, which is piloting the ELIA platform at its Montreal headquarters with a view to eventually rolling it out to all of its offices. The owner of the journal will also be able to support the young company in its development with his expertise in the areas of business strategies, performance marketing and product marketing.
asterX has also invested jointly with Artopex, the Granby office furniture manufacturer, with the aim of developing a series of smart furniture with GPHY.
“This funding round allows us to accelerate our marketing efforts,” said Anthony Blais. Our target group are large companies and SMEs with 50 or more employees who want to optimize their office space. »
GPHY initially targets the Quebec market before expanding into other Canadian provinces and eventually the United States.
“We also want to further develop our platform to add new functions based on artificial intelligence. We also want to integrate other technologies such as Teams, Google Suite and Slack, which are widely used by companies. This will facilitate its adoption,” adds Anthony Blais, who has always dreamed of becoming an entrepreneur.
We can say that his entrepreneurial adventure started with a bang.
GPHY
- founding date : 2018
- activities : Technology companies managing hybrid work environments
- shareholders : Anthony Blais, Hubert Audet, Myrik Hervieux-Gaudreau, Pier-Etienne Lehoux
- number of employees : 16
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