Founder & Principal
Cezanne Partners is the transactional extension of a longer journey started in 1997 in Singapore, where I built the first web pages for a Singapore Technologies entity as an intern.
After a decade as a pre-sales consultant and product manager at industry-leading companies (Gemplus, now Thales, Experian), I founded and ran a company, raised capital, earned patents and, when the time came, wound it down.
Alongside building, I have taught strategy and innovation to more than a thousand students at a top French business school, and advised companies on strategy and antifragility under the Avagam banner.
“To be ignorant of what occurred before you were born is to remain always a child. For what is the worth of human life, unless it is woven into the life of our ancestors by the records of history?”
What shapes how I work
An operator, not only an advisor
Founder-CEO of an industrial IoT company for fifteen years — €2M in revenue with tier-1 customers, €1.5M raised, four international patents, and the discipline of ATEX certification & audit. I have lived the full company life cycle, which is exactly what qualifying an asset requires.
A strategist by design
Professor of Strategy & Innovation at KEDGE Business School for seven years, and holding an MBA from IAE Aix-en-Provence whose thesis was in intellectual property. Today I advise on strategy and antifragility through Avagam — the heritage Cezanne Partners extends into transactions.
Built for international corridors
A career spent across borders — chip-migration missions in Mexico, Denmark and Turkey, two years in Brussels, an Erasmus year in Spain, an internship in Singapore, business trips to India in 2014 and 2024. Working across cultures and regulatory regimes is not an add-on for me; it is the native setting of the EU–India corridor.
Fluent in the technology
A telecom and electrical engineer who has spent recent years on agentic AI, payments, critical-systems security and industrial IoT — a founding member of ETSI's cybersecurity group and an AFNOR standardisation expert. The agentic platform behind Cezanne Partners is built on that foundation, with a human-in-the-loop at every stage.
An entrepreneur who has been through liquidation
I built a company from nothing to a valuation of several million euros — then watched the Covid crisis take it apart. I lived the full liquidation: the asset-by-asset carve-up, the valuations that collapse under time pressure, the machines and teams dispersed. It was brutal, and it is the reason I do this work. I know what a seller feels, what a distressed timetable really costs, and why a fair, fast, honest process matters more than a flattering headline price.
Confidentiality is in my DNA
My career began inside organisations where discretion is not a policy but a condition of employment: Thales in defence-grade cybersecurity, then Experian on secondment to Mastercard on payment systems. Years of handling sensitive data and client information under strict controls built a reputation for integrity I have no intention of spending. What you tell me stays with me.
A problem solver at ease with complexity
Financing dead-ends, fraud rings, brittle technology, production bottlenecks — the pattern of my career is being handed the tangled problem and staying with it until there is a way through. Sometimes the answer is rigorous execution of the obvious; often it means inventing an unconventional option nobody had put on the table. Cross-border deals in the €10k–€10M band are exactly that kind of problem: structurally awkward, and solvable with the right imagination.
A diversified network
Two decades of engineering, corporate and entrepreneurial work have left me with a network that spans France and abroad — industrialists, engineers, lawyers, financiers, insolvency practitioners and operators across Europe and India. It is deliberately varied rather than deep in a single niche, and it is the quiet infrastructure behind Cezanne Partners: how assets get found, how counterparts get qualified, and how a transaction finds the right specialist at the right moment.
Credentials
Education
MBA, E-Business — IAE Aix-en-ProvenceElectrical & Telecom Engineer — INSA Lyon
Company built
Founder and CEO — Intellinium (2009–2024)€2M revenue · €1.5M raised · 4 international patents
Teaching
Professor of Strategy & Innovation — KEDGE1,200+ students over seven years
Corporate experience
Pre-Sales Consultant & Product Manager — ExperianInternational Cybersecurity Consultant — Thales
Recognition
IoT Innovation World Cup (2018)Prix Med'Innovant Smart City (2017)
Why Cézanne?
“We live in a rainbow of chaos.”— Paul Cézanne (1839–1906)
The name is a deliberate choice. Cézanne spent his life finding structure and order beneath apparent disorder — which is exactly the work of judging an asset: reading the value and the shape of a deal through the noise of a distressed or complex situation.
Let's talk
If you are weighing a European asset for an Indian buyer — or the reverse — I would rather have a direct conversation than send a brochure.
Get in touch