From Geo-Guidance to a Digital Protection Bubble

A Conversation with Estelle Valeri, CEO of PrivaMap

Industrial sites, ports, airports and logistics facilities can be challenging environments to navigate. Large footprints, restricted areas, heavy vehicle traffic, changing conditions and multilingual workforces all create potential risks, particularly for contractors, drivers and visitors who may be unfamiliar with the site.

French company PrivaMap is addressing this challenge with a digital geo-guidance platform designed to guide and protect people as they move through complex private sites. Using a smartphone and personalized QR code, the solution provides interactive, multilingual guidance without requiring users to download an app, while giving site operators real-time visibility into movements, hazards and incidents.

PrivaMap was founded in 2021 within the Alacrité France startup program, based on a need identified by Aéroports de Paris. Today, CEO Estelle Valeri leads the company alongside co-founders Océane Bligand, Head of Product, and Julien Hégo, Head of Technology. The company is now applying its technology across increasingly diverse environments — from industrial and logistics sites to ports and major urban districts.

We sat down with Estelle to discuss what inspired PrivaMap, how the company is turning navigation into an active layer of site safety, the role of the Alacrité France ecosystem in its journey, and her perspective as a woman leading a technology company.

Estelle, what problem was PrivaMap originally created to solve?

The starting point was a very concrete problem: how do you safely and efficiently manage the movement of people and vehicles across large, complex private sites?

On an industrial, logistics, airport or port site, you can have many different people arriving every day — employees, contractors, service providers and drivers — and they don’t necessarily know the environment. There may be restricted areas, dangerous zones, specific traffic rules and different instructions depending on where someone needs to go.

Traditionally, much of this information has been communicated through paper maps, signs or verbal instructions. But these approaches don’t adapt easily when conditions change.

We saw an opportunity to make this experience much more dynamic — to guide people in real time while also giving the site greater visibility and control over what is happening.

You often describe PrivaMap as creating a “Digital Protection Bubble.” What does that mean?

For us, it’s about going beyond navigation. A conventional GPS can tell you how to get from point A to point B. But on a private site, the shortest route isn’t necessarily the safest route. You need to understand the specific risks, restrictions and rules of that environment.

PrivaMap combines interactive geolocation with safety protocols, real-time supervision and alerts. From the moment someone enters the site, they receive personalized guidance and information relevant to their journey. If something changes, for example, a hazard appears or an area becomes restricted, the system can react and guide people away from danger.

That’s what we mean by a Digital Protection Bubble: a dynamic digital layer that accompanies people throughout their journey and helps protect them from the risks around them.

What does the experience look like for someone arriving at a site for the first time?

We wanted it to be extremely simple. The person receives a personalized QR code, scans it with their smartphone and immediately accesses PrivaMap. There is no application to download. From there, they receive the information and route relevant to their destination. The guidance is interactive and adapted to the specific site, so the user isn’t simply following a generic map. They’re being guided according to the site’s rules, access restrictions and safety requirements.

For someone arriving at an unfamiliar site, that simplicity is important. We want them to be able to start their journey immediately, without having to learn a new system or navigate a complicated onboarding process.

You’ve designed PrivaMap for environments where people, vehicles and operations can be highly international. Why was multilingual capability an important part of the platform from the beginning?

A safety instruction is only useful if the person understands it. Many industrial, logistics and port sites receive drivers and contractors from different countries every day. If someone doesn’t fully understand an instruction about a restricted zone, loading area or emergency procedure, that can create unnecessary risk.

That’s why PrivaMap can deliver guidance, safety protocols and alerts in 28 languages. It allows the site to maintain a consistent safety process while adapting the communication to the individual using it. For us, multilingual capability isn’t simply a convenience or a feature of the platform. It’s part of making sure that the information we provide can actually be understood and acted upon.

You’ve now applied PrivaMap to some very different environments. What have you learned from working across industrial sites, logistics facilities, ports and urban environments?

The environments can look completely different, but the underlying problem is often the same: people and vehicles need to move through a complex space safely and efficiently.

The risks and operational requirements are different from one site to another, so the technology has to be flexible. On an industrial site, you may be dealing with hazardous areas and specific safety protocols. At a logistics facility, optimizing traffic flow and reducing the time a truck spends on site can be particularly important. At a port, access restrictions and precise positioning become critical. And then you have a major international business district, which is a completely different environment again.

What we’ve learned is that geo-guidance becomes particularly valuable wherever there is complexity, movement and a need to coordinate people in real time.

Let’s talk about one of your port use cases. How is PrivaMap being used at the Port de Calais?

The Port de Calais is a great example of how geo-guidance can improve both the traveller experience and operational performance. One of the challenges was helping passengers navigate the port more easily, particularly finding their correct boarding area and accessing essential services such as restrooms, food and tax-free shopping.

PrivaMap helps guide travellers through the port and reduces the number of passengers who get lost or need assistance finding their way to their ferry. This also has an operational benefit for the ferry companies, which spend less time looking for passengers who have not reached their boarding area.

The solution also gives the port greater visibility into how people use its infrastructure and helps identify opportunities to improve the overall service experience.

As Anthony Pétillon, Head of Strategy and Development at the Port de Calais, puts it: “Image, performance logistique, performance économique : avec PrivaMap, nous sommes gagnants sur tous les tableaux.” In other words, he sees PrivaMap as delivering benefits across the board — from improving the port’s image and traveller experience, to strengthening logistics and supporting economic performance.

One of the interesting aspects of PrivaMap is that you’re not simply guiding people, you’re also creating a real-time safety layer. How does incident reporting work?

We wanted safety to be interactive rather than static. With PrivaMap, someone on site can report an incident or danger in just two clicks. The alert, including the user’s position, is transmitted to the site’s security team in real time.

At the same time, once a danger has been identified, people present on the site can be alerted and given instructions to avoid the area, reroute or take shelter. So information can move in both directions: from the site to the people on the ground, and from the people on the ground back to the site’s security team. That creates a much more responsive safety environment.

How does PrivaMap change the way companies approach safety protocols?

A lot of safety processes are still heavily dependent on documentation and manual procedures. The challenge isn’t necessarily that companies don’t have safety protocols. They do. The challenge is making sure those protocols are consistently understood and followed by everyone entering the site.

PrivaMap brings those processes into the digital experience. The safety information can be adapted to the specific site and operation and presented to the person in the appropriate language. It means safety isn’t something you read once at the entrance and then put away. It becomes part of the journey through the site.

PrivaMap was created through the Alacrité France program. How important was that ecosystem to your journey?

Launching PrivaMap within the Alacrité France program was a key to our success. The strategic mentorship, access to funding and the Wesley Clover International network gave us the momentum to bring our geolocation solutions to market faster and with greater confidence. When you’re building a technology company, having access to people who can challenge your thinking, help you navigate the early stages and open doors to a broader network makes a real difference.

Alacrité France gave us the opportunity to concentrate on building the company and validating the solution while having that support around us. The model was particularly valuable because PrivaMap was built around a real customer need identified through the ecosystem. That connection between a concrete problem, technology development and access to the market helped shape the company from the beginning.

You’re a woman leading a technology company in a traditionally male-dominated sector. How has that experience influenced your approach to innovation and leadership?

As a woman in tech, I’ve learned that diversity is not just a strength, it’s a necessity for innovation. Different perspectives allow us to look at problems from different angles and identify challenges that might otherwise be overlooked.

For me personally, working in a predominantly male sector has also reinforced the importance of resilience, adaptability and listening. I place a lot of value on understanding the perspectives of our customers, partners and team and using those insights to challenge assumptions.

Innovation doesn’t happen in isolation. It comes from bringing different experiences and perspectives together. That’s something I try to reflect in how we build PrivaMap, how we work with our customers and how we approach the opportunities ahead.

You’ve built the company alongside co-founders Océane Bligand and Julien Hégo. How important has that complementary expertise been?

It’s been fundamental. PrivaMap brings together three different areas of expertise. Océane leads product, Julien leads technology, and I focus on the CEO and commercial side. Building a company requires all of those perspectives. You need to understand the customer and the market, but you also need to translate those needs into a product that works and technology that can scale.

Having complementary expertise allows us to challenge each other and make better decisions. And ultimately, we’re all focused on the same objective: making movement on private sites safer and more efficient.

Looking ahead, where do you see the biggest opportunity for PrivaMap?

We see an opportunity to make interactive, secure geo-guidance a standard part of how complex private sites operate. There are still many environments where people arrive with a paper map, receive verbal instructions or simply have to figure out where they’re going once they enter the site. But these environments are becoming more complex, and companies need better visibility into what is happening within them.

Our ambition is to guide and protect every person and vehicle from the moment they arrive until they leave, while helping the site optimize its operations at the same time. The fact that we’re now working across industrial sites, logistics facilities, ports and urban environments shows us that the opportunity extends well beyond one particular industry.

Ultimately, we want PrivaMap to become the reference for interactive geo-guidance with security at its core on private sites across Europe and beyond.

To learn more about PrivaMap, visit privamap.com.