Explorers’ Words highlights French companies’ experience abroad to encourage their peers to discover new international opportunities. Today’s episode welcomes Stephan Jenn, President and co-founder of NovAlix.

For almost two decades now, NovAlix has operated in the drug discovery and development sector. The Strasbourg-based company offers an expertise and its knowledge in many related fields such as chemistry, biophysics, structural biology, and work for medical progress more generally. The company ensures to meet its clients’ objectives, either in France or abroad. In this aim, NovAlix teams use outsourcing, accomplishing projects in their own lab, and insourcing, providing research teams to their clients’ onsite labs.

An outsourced research operator all over the world

“From the very beginning, we have sought to internationalize ourselves as much as possible”. As Stephan Jenn, CEO of the company, explains, NovAlix was meant to become international: the drug research sector knows no frontiers: “In most businesses, markets are global. A global presence also means that we have to keep up with the times in terms of competitiveness, and this is essential for a long-term vision”.

Among the many reasons behind this worldwide expansion, the company wanted to develop its growth, but also to benchmark its research capabilities. For Stephan Jenn, having international activities also means diversifying their markets “to spread business risk geographically”. Bpifrance’s support helped the entrepreneur remove all the barriers he could think about when going worldwide: “any entrepreneur’s fear about “how am I going to manage” … Well, all those fears disappeared!”. Today, the company’s reached Germany, Belgium, Spain, the United States and Japan, a market they’re very proud of. “We have a significant flow of business with pharmaceutical research devices in Japan”, said Stephan Jenn.  

As Covid-19 reminded the world of the importance of challenges in the healthcare sector, NovAlix should continue to work on medical progress on the international scene.

Discover Stephan Jenn’s Explorers Words in the video below: