‘French Healthcare Association and you’, episode 2: Ellipse Projects and its Commercial Director, Frank Simonet

26 July 2024 /

French Healthcare Association meets with Frank Simonet, head of commercial operations at Ellipse Projects. Ellipse Projects is a leading provider of financing, design, and implementation services for major infrastructure projects, particularly in Africa and Southeast Asia. The company relies on a comprehensive network of subsidiaries and branches to ensure close proximity to the field for better project implementation.  

 In this second episode of ‘French Healthcare Association and you’, Frank Simonet outlines his collaboration with French Healthcare Association since 2021, as well as his career path and the added value he believes Ellipse Projects offers. He also mentions the development of a large-scale project in Ukraine, initiated by French Healthcare Association. 

Our exclusive interview is available below. 

What is Ellipse Projects’ purpose ?

Notre société is a European group based in Paris. We specialise in the design, financing and construction of turnkey infrastructures in two core fields: health and digital technology. Our activities are primarily focused in two geographical areas:  Africa, with an emphasis on West Africa, and on Asia, with a specific focus on Indonesia.  

 Our company’s competitive advantage lies in our ability to provide turnkey solutions for our projects, from initial planning to implementation. First and foremost, an infrastructure project (particularly in the health or digital sectors) always requires a number of preliminary studies: feasibility studies, technical and economic studies, environmental and social impact studies, geotechnical studies, and so on. In short, there are several prerequisites that must be met before the project can be brought to fruition. Often, the countries we work in lack the technical and financial capacities to prepare these projects thanks to such studies. Which is why we want to provide pre-financing. 

 The second part of our turnkey approach is financing: for each project, we help the customer (in this case states and governments) to put together the financing to support the project. Finally, the third part is the technical side: when we work on an infrastructure, we design the entire project. If we take the example of a hospital, our scope of work includes the construction, but also all the medical and technical equipment, the electrical networks, IT, water and waste treatment… everything needed to make a hospital operational. I believe this turnkey approach is the reason for the company’s strong growth in recent years. 

What is the role of the sales director at Ellipse Projects?  

 The commercial activity can be divided into three phases :   

  •  Qualifying opportunities, i.e. identifying projects among all the concepts or pre-tenders, and then selecting those that are most likely to succeed and have the highest priority.   
  • We also need to structure the financing, find partners interested in the project and implement the financing.   
  • Finally, once the project has been developed with the help of Ellipse’s various offer departments, we negotiate with the beneficiary until the contract is signed and even until the conditions precedent to the financing are lifted: a rather complicated process that can take several months or even years. 

What is your background ?  

 I started my career in large export projects, so it is no coincidence that I’m here today. I’ve done a lot of business development work in my various roles, mainly abroad and always on large projects. After training in sales, I joined the Alcatel group at a time when it was part of the very large French industrial group Alcatel Alsthom, a group specialised in telecommunications, TGV, nuclear power stations… At the time, it was one of the jewels in the crown of French industry. I then took on international positions, particularly in Asia. I left this fine company after about fifteen years to join a series of American start-ups in the technology sector. The last of these was acquired by the Ericsson group, so I returned to the big European groups. 

 About ten years ago, I finally decided to join Ellipse Projects, whose founder I had known since my career at Alcatel: I wanted a new life, a new adventure. When I arrived, I took charge of several projects in Asia, one of which took shape last year with the start of the construction of a sovereign data centre in Indonesia. This was a long-term project that took seven years to complete and was a great success for Ellipse. I’m also responsible for Ellipse’s commercial development in certain African countries and, since last year, in Ukraine and Eastern Europe in general.  

Why did you join French Healthcare Association ?  

We joined French Healthcare Association in 2021 with the aim of strenghtening our ties with the French device manufacturer ecosystem. Each time a hospital is built, several thousand items must be ordered. Naturally, we wanted to favour the French sector when equipping our hospitals.    

This membership was therefore a way of forging closer links with these different partners, particularly those with a natural interest in exporting. We also quickly realised that French Healthcare Association was very active and very useful in opening up new markets, particularly through the French Healthcare Innovation & Business Forum and the various missions organised abroad, the best example being our joint success in Ukraine.   

What does this project in Ukraine entail ?  

This project began with our participation in the Forum for the Reconstruction of Ukraine organised at Bercy on the initiative of the President of the Republic. We were invited along with several hundred other French companies. There was a health workshop run by French Healthcare Association, where we realised that the association had already done a lot of work in Ukraine and had established special relationships with the Ministry of Health and the Ministry of Finance, with the support of the French Treasury. The Ukrainian Minister of Health took part in the entire workshop, by videoconference from Kyiv. 

Following this conference, we were able to confirm to the association our interest in participating in the reconstruction of Ukraine and thus in the impetus given by the French authorities. Following a mission to Kyiv led by French Healthcare Association, several projects were also identified, notably the construction of modular hospitals. 

A consultation was organised with French companies that had expressed an interest, again through French Health Association, and we were selected by the Ukrainian Ministry of Health. We then entered direct discussions with them to understand their needs in detail.   

One thing led to another, and the project focused on rebuilding the hospital in Borodyanka, on the outskirts of Kyiv. Soline Allard and I travelled to the capital at the end of October under the auspices of the association. This mission enabled us to finalise the technical characteristics of the project. At the same time, the French Treasury, through the embassy’s economic department and the ambassador, was able to make progress on the financial aspects of the project.

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