Farouk Cherif: Kiwitron's new contact for France, Belgium and North Africa

Tell us a bit about yourself. Who is Farouk Cherif?

I’m the proud father of 2 boys aged 8 and 10 who are full of life and energy. We live in Paris with my wife near the most beautiful French monument 🗼 !

Each of our children planted 150 olive trees on our family land that are now their age in Mornag, Tunisia. They are very proud to look after them and, above all, to harvest them at the end of each year to produce organic oil from an exceptional terroir 🌳.

Five years ago I decided to go back to school, taking an Executive MBA course at ESSEC & Mannheim, which changed my view of the world. After this experience I decided to take on an entrepreneurial challenge in an innovative company.

Cycling and basketball are my favorite sports, even though we spend a lot of time on children’s activities.

Can you tell us about your career path?

I’ve been lucky enough to work with 3 of the biggest Ivy league companies in the industry – Honeywell, Siemens and General Electric – in roles of increasing responsibility. My business is all about building relationships with customers, colleagues and shareholders. You have to understand the expectations and challenges of each stakeholder in order to meet them as effectively as possible and deliver a 5* customer experience.

During COVID19 I took the time to continue my MBA, travel to the USA and do some self-reflection to find out where I wanted to go. I also trained in Digital Marketing at ESSEC, as companies are increasingly adopting an omnichannel business approach.

At the end of COVID19, an American private equity firm contacted me to join RUBIX, one of their portfolio companies based in London, to look after their key accounts in the European industrial sector.

What is your role at Kiwitron and how will you support customers in France?

Since October 2024, I’ve joined the team of Kiwitron founders Andrea, Carlo and Daniele to be the face of the company’s existing and future customers in France, Switzerland, Belgium and North Africa. Being based in the capital of France, which generates over +30% of the country’s GDP, or +5% of Europe’s GDP, is a privilege.

1 year ago, one of my former customers with whom we did €5 million a year called me in a panic to tell me that his group had just had an employee killed by a forklift truck in Mexico. As a result, the worldwide HSE Director asked each country to work on this risk and propose solutions. Unfortunately, I didn’t know Kiwitron at the time!

That’s why I joined Kiwitron, to promote our AI-enhanced anti-pedestrian collision solutions, our fleet management systems and our logistics flow optimization systems.

We’re going to find new customers, win the loyalty of existing ones, and conquer new vertical markets such as agricultural machinery or the airport sector.

It will be possible to buy our solutions (CAPEX), but also to rent them (OPEX), as some customers are asking for this to fit into their budgets.

How would you describe Kiwitron, and what do you think makes it unique for customers?

What I love about Kiwitron is the youthfulness of the teams. There are lots of colleagues announcing a wedding, a birth or a move to live as a couple. It’s a good sign, because it’s important to grow with the company. It’s also our customers who make us and our solutions grow.

Our solutions start from an unresolved customer problem, and what’s unique about Kiwitron is that R&D is ‘in-house’, made in Bologna.

We’re able to adapt our neural network to a specific customer or application, as we did for a major group in the sugar industry. We trained the neural network to recognize more quickly an employee in white clothing in an environment where everything is white, for example.

We’re agile at Kiwitron, and our customers’ problems are our solutions for today and tomorrow!

Why should customers choose Kiwitron now that you’re part of the team?

Customers can trust Kiwitron because our business model has been validated by our customers. We see our customers as partners, because our horizon is the medium term.

With Europe’s aging population and the arrival of the GenZ on the job market, every company is preparing for these changes. Our Kiwitron solutions help to reduce the risk of accidents for older employees who are afraid of operating handling equipment, and to help them to return to safer working habits.

For GenZ, for example, forklift truck drivers and site equipment operators are still hard jobs, so how can we make them more attractive? Kiwitron responds to this constraint by equipping forklift fleets with stereo cameras and control screens as if they were in a video game.

Our customers will be able to view demos, plan PoCs (Proof of Concept), be trained on our solutions and supported at every stage of their decision-making process or customer journey.

My vision for France is to be in every factory or industrial site where there are more than 5 electric or thermal handling machines. It’s to be in every logistics warehouse in France over 20,000 m².

What are your plans for the future?

We’ve already made contact with a number of industry prospects in France. We’re trying to do things that make sense at every stage of our deployment in France. The feedback is quite encouraging!

I’ve already visited 2 trade shows in Paris, Expo’Protection and Pollutec. We’re currently preparing our marketing plan, which includes participation in at least 2 trade shows in 2025, including PREVENTICA Paris from June 10 to 12 at Porte de Versailles.

We’ll be organizing webminars to present our solutions, the idea being to create a community around Kiwitron in France as a priority.

Given my experience and that of my colleagues, we’re going to use digital to increase our presence on networks like LinkedIn. We’re also going to work more closely with integrators and manufacturers of handling equipment.

KIWITRON: IT’S BETTER TO PREVENT ⚠ THAN TO CURE ⛑

Contact Farouk free of charge to find the best solution for your needs.