Émilie Daversin (BBA 01) is a business leader with many hats! After several years working in the events sector for major luxury brands in France and internationally, she launched VO2 Group with her husband in 2011. A global player in Tech, Digital & AI consulting, VO2 Group has become one of the world’s leading experts in customer and corporate experience. Today, the company employs 750 consultants throughout France, the United States, Canada, Belgium, Switzerland, Israel and China, mainly in the luxury/retail, hospitality and automotive sectors, with revenues approaching €100 million. Winner of the French Women Entrepreneurs 40 award and a Business Angel, Émilie Daversin devotes a great deal of her time to promoting women in the worlds of Tech and entrepreneurship. Interview.

Reflets Magazine: Why did you decide to go straight into entrepreneurship?
Émilie Daversin: Because I’ve always been very independent, highly enterprising and persistent. At the age of seven, I published my first newspaper. At secondary school, I organised stage shows. During my studies, I sold a press review to BBA and ESSEC students, and in my final year, I worked part-time for one of the world’s largest jazz festivals. I’ve always had this entrepreneurial spirit and drive to see things through to the end.

RM: Can you tell us about VO2 Group?
É. Daversin: It’s a company we founded with Florent, my husband, nearly fifteen years ago, at a time when we were both entrepreneurs, each running our own ventures. VO2 Group is a tech, digital & AI consulting firm, organised around two core business pillars: customer and employee experience, underpinned by an advisory vision and a strong tech focus. VO2 Group initially developed around a network of highly committed independent experts. Ten years ago, we placed our trust in our first employees and rapidly diversified to meet our clients’ needs. So it’s a real “family & friends” firm, but extremely professional, nonethless. We’ve adopted a somewhat American approach to entrepreneurship: we never give up, we grow and learn by doing, and it never stops.

RM: Why VO2 Group, and what does the name mean?
É. Daversin: VO2 was my husband’s idea. It comes from VO2 Max, the sports indicator. VO2 Max is the maximum volume of oxygen in the blood that the body can use during exertion, so it’s a performance indicator. When we were thinking about a name, my husband, who’s a running enthusiast, said that VO2 sounded cool. I added Group, for the ambition, before it became a reality. And that’s the story in a nutshell...

RM: How would you define your business activity?
É. Daversin: VO2 Group’s goal has always been to offer the most diverse and complementary service platform possible to clients who often have a strong vision but limited capacity to act, due to a lack of expertise or organisational complexity. Historically positioned in customer experience as a strategic partner of Salesforce, we have gradually expanded our scope with complementary expertise in tech, data and AI, along with business consulting. We made very early acquisitions to verticalise our offerings, starting with finance, followed by luxury retail—opening in North America and acquiring a company in Shanghai to follow our clients. We have adopted a model based on targeted, premium diversification. What sets us apart from the major players in the sector is our agility and our ability to mobilise united, committed teams around a single vision—the “One Team VO2” approach—which is especially crucial when supporting international clients in managing global factories. Today, we design unified platforms where artificial intelligence is central to the use cases—conversatio nal agents, intelligent process automation, orchestration of flows between mobile applications, e-commerce, customer service, supply chains, and more.

RM: What have been the key milestones in VO2 Group’s growth?
É. Daversin: VO2 Group is a true entrepreneurial adventure. As I mentioned, we started out with a core group of independent consultants and had to find a model to engage them in working together as a team. Quite quickly, our clients asked us for consultants on permanent contracts. At that point, we opened our capital to consultants who wanted to join us— some of whom are still working with us today. We then acquired several companies and expanded first into North America. Then, during the Covid years and the subsequent lockdown in 2020 and 2021, we broke through into the luxury industry by equipping sales teams at the world’s most prestigious brands with customer engagement applications. That’s what enabled players like LVMH, for example, to maintain their customer relationships and weather the storm. We then specialised in premium engagement platforms and e-commerce, followed by employee experience and change management with the acquisition of Insideboard AI, a SaaS platform dedicated to driving the adoption of technological innovation. We are actively involved with General Motors in the US, for example.

RM: Did you have to rely heavily on external funding?
É. Daversin: Not at all. We have banking partners, but we are 100% independent, and that’s a great source of pride today. It has enabled us to grow while retaining full control over our strategies, our growth, and our decisions. During times of crisis, we were able to honour our commitments to our teams, and that was important to us. Of course, we haven’t ruled to help us accelerate our growth.

RM: What word would you use to define VO2 Group?
É. Daversin: I would say excellence—excellence with a French touch, in fact! We work for the world’s top clients—highly visionary people who know exactly how to combine technology, innovation, and business expertise. Meanwhile, on our side, we are surrounded by highly committed partners and team members who see things through to the end. These are highly international profiles recruited first and foremost for their tech vision and unwavering focus on delivery. Today, consulting, in the age of AI, cannot be separated from expertise and a premium, solution-oriented. Our peers are excellent, but our agility and entrepreneurial spirit serving our clients are truly unique.

RM: What is your view of the market today? 
É. Daversin: I feel that the global tech and digital market fails to convey sufficiently positive and enthusiastic messages about new uses and the impact of technology. At VO2 Group, we want to be on the right side of tech—the side that enlightens, that offers solutions and opportunities, that stays close to people and to clients. Today, the tech market and its narrative are dominated by the major AI players and their CEOs. Then you have the hyperscalers, who have been around for a long time and offer more or less mature augmented solutions, often far removed from people, and so on. In between, you have the clients and employees who are left wondering, “What’s the next move?” In our consulting and service professions, we need to remain highly positive and practical in order to deliver a realistic message and provide useful, scalable solutions that remain close to our clients. We must be extremely rigorous in everything we do, while maintaining an innovative outlook and, above all, focusing on “safe and sustainable tech”.

RM: You were a winner in “French Women Entrepreneurs 40” awards. What does that mean to you?
É. Daversin: It’s a great source of pride, and I’m also pleased that it was in the mid-cap category, because I often feel that I fall outside the usual categories. I’m not the founder of a tech startup in the strict sense of the term, nor am I the head of a large group or a major company. VO2 Group isn’t an SME either; today, it’s now a mid-sized company, a business that operates in the Tech and Digital sector and is growing. But you should be aware that the percentage of women founders and leaders of mid-cap companies, especially in the tech and digital sector, is close to zero.

RM: And precisely, what is the position of women in tech in general, and within your company in particular?
É. Daversin: We had perfect gender parity just two or three years ago; today, women make up around 45% of our workforce. In any case, I always say that parity starts with us, the women founders and leaders. As Clara Gaymard puts it so well, influence is all well and good for women, but power and money are the real key—something we tend to forget a little too often. Contrary to popular belief, the French tech sector actually includes a great many women in all roles and at every level. While women entrepreneurs account for only 10% to 15% of the sector in France, the proportion of women rises to 25-30% in pure development, which is already quite significant, and if we look at the entire tech and digital sector, even within CAC 40 groups, women represent 30 to 40%. A good example of this is Salesforce France, one of our main partners, which is also led by a woman, Emilie Sidiqian. More attention should be paid to these role models, as there are still plenty of challenges ahead.

RM: You’re also actively involved with the ESSEC Innovation and Entrepreneurship Institute, as well as Lead’Hers. Could you tell us more about it?
É. Daversin: Lead’Hers is, above all, an amazing team that I immediately felt at home with! The programme, run in partnership with ESSEC and CentraleSupélec, is truly excellent. The women are fantastic, with an amazing mindset. It has enabled me to meet lots of people and exchange ideas during the workshops, even though there is never enough time for me to take part in everything. It was a way for me to reconnect with the ESSEC community and to give something back, by supporting one or two cohorts. And that gives meaning to what I do, a notion that matters deeply to me, by giving my time.

RM: Aside from that, have you maintained links with any other ESSEC alumni?
É. Daversin: Yes, for example, I am in contact with some truly inspiring female leaders such as Mélanie Carron (E05), CEO of Ladurée, and Natacha Hochet-Raab (E95), Managing Director EMEA, Japan & US at FRED Paris. There’s also Sandra Talbot-Arnal (E99), International Director at Guerlain, whom I recently met up with again at a women in business event hosted by our client Dior. Another one is Harold Parisot (BBA 00), the founder and president of the Chinese Business Club. I’ve also attended several events organised by the school and received messages from alumni I’d be delighted to see again. All of this makes me want to keep reconnecting with people.

RM: You also co-founded Leia Capital, a 100% female Business Angels group. What kind of projects do you support?
É. Daversin: We target innovative projects led by women. For example, we have invested in Green-Got, a startup specialising in sustainable finance; in Underdog, a startup specialising in refurbished household appliances; and in Primaa, a HealthTech startup developing artificial intelligence solutions for cancer detection. In short, there are about thirty of us women who founded Leila Capital—entrepreneurs, executives in major corporations, or lawyers—who support and champion other women leading inspiring projects. With us, they know they can sometimes put down roots while still moving forward, and that really excites us.

RM: VO2 Group is listed in Fortune Magazine’s ranking of Europe’s most innovative companies and in Les Échos’ list of champions of growth and innovation. How do you see the near future?
É. Daversin: These rankings provide welcome recognition, and our client L’Oréal is the leader in the Fortune ranking. However, I consider 2025 to have been a rather lacklustre year for our sector, even though our international business has supported us strongly. For 2026, I expect us to diversify even further and to resume our acquisitions. That’s a powerful source of motivation for our teams and for me personally; I designed our model with that in mind!

This interview is part of our latest Reflets Mag dedicated to entrepreneurship:

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Propos recueillis par François de Guillebon, rédacteur en chef de Reflets Magazine