Simon Dawlat

Simon Dawlat is a French entrepreneur born in Paris in 1984. After a stay in Silicon Valley, he founded AppGratis in 2009. After Apple discontinued the application, the company developed Batch.com, a company specialized in mobile CRM and push notifications in 2018.
Childhood, training and first entrepreneurial experiences
Simon studied for a Bachelor of Arts degree in Modern Letters at the Sorbonne. In parallel, he worked as a freelancer for various European start-ups . In 2007, he left for an internship in the Silicon Valley. He stayed there for 2 years, working for CreativeFeed and then Sonim Technologies. In 2008, Simon, who was already developing applications, saw Apple's App Store as a future opportunity. He created then a company to develop mobile games.
The creation of AppGratis
Back in France in 2009, Simon launched "AppGratis", a daily newsletter dedicated to mobile applications. By the end of 2009, more than 20,000 people had subscribed and the model evolved into a medium that could now be used in various media (newsletter, mobile application, website).
In 2012, the AppGratis app that had been downloaded more than 50 million times was available in 30 countries and 12 languages. The company employed nearly 100 people of 12 different nationalities in Paris. It received a financial support of €10 million in December 2012 from Iris Capital and Orange Publicis Ventures.
From AppGratis to Batch.com
In April 2013, Apple deregistered the AppGratis application from its App Store, signing a decline phase for the startup followed by a "pivot" towards a new project, Batch.com from 2014. The AppGratis service was definitively closed 4 years later, in February 2017.
In 2018 the "pivot" to Batch was successful. Within a few months, the company returned to a high level of profitability. It now distributes its technology in more than 15 countries and employs 40 people for more than 50 billion push notifications sent each year and counts among its customers nearly 1/3 of the CAC40 and thousands of major accounts and startups such as Société Générale, BNP, AXA, EDF, L'Oréal, Les Echos, Le Parisien, France 24, L'Express, Axel Springer, Chauffeur-Privé, Cityscoot or Vestiaire Collective.
Other activities
Simon Dawlat is also a business angel with young Internet companies (notably in Wit.AI acquired by Facebook in 2015 or in Nabla.com) .

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