SME universe | Cogni wins… to be known

Cogni – as in cognitive – is worth knowing.

It is already recognized: founded in 2020 by Emmanuella Michel, the Montreal firm received the Innovative Company prize from the Gala for the Recognition Of Black Entrepreneurs of Quebec on April 25.

The event, in its second edition, is organized by the Afro-Entrepreneurs Fund to encourage and highlight the entrepreneurial initiatives of Afro-descendant communities in Quebec.

Of the hundred applications submitted in 10 categories, more than half concerned women.

Including Emmanuella Michel.

“I was very moved, I didn’t expect it,” she comments. I was the only woman among several men in innovation. »

Her company offers education, health and social services professionals “a mental health management platform amplified by AI, an extension of the toolbox of service providers,” she describes.

The Cogni platform offers them a series of preventive and customizable therapeutic pathways and solutions.

While waiting for random and distant access to mental health services, workers can thus offer their clients, before their condition degenerates, “personalized assistance for self-care programs, group therapies and counseling, or even therapies assisted by virtual reality,” she explains.

Of Master key at the doctorate

Originally from Haiti, the entrepreneur arrived in Quebec at the age of 5, where she did all her studies, from primary school to doctorate: “I did kindergarten, I did Master key “, she said, laughing.

Holder of a master’s degree in social administration, she devoted herself for around fifteen years to health and social services, first as a clinician working with young people in difficulty, then successively managing two group homes.

In 2017, noting what she modestly calls “challenges in terms of prevention” in mental health, she returned to studies. Not just anywhere: at the doctorate in educational technology at Laval University, where she wanted to deepen virtual immersion techniques, which she had started to use in certain interventions.

She is finishing writing her thesis on “the use of virtual reality in the context of student engagement in an inclusive classroom”.

“My research supervisor will tell me that I should be focused on my doctorate, not giving interviews to The Press “, she quips.

Sorry…

She learned to design “serious games”, immersive situations that are fun, but above all educational and formative. “So I could turn mental health programs into serious games. »

She was one of the hundred people invited by Facebook to California to discover the potential of its new virtual reality (VR) headset and develop projects that would put it to good use.

“And that’s where my Cogni platform was born. »

Faced with the low diffusion of VR headsets, she oriented her project and her web platform towards a series of tools to support group therapies and self-care.

Self-care involves virtual interactive programs that are accessible on cell phones, tablets or laptops. “The concept of serious games is used in the design of our programs to encourage individuals to enjoy their journey and engage therapeutically, while giving them access to educational information about their well-being” , describes Emmanuella Michel.

Virtual reality comes into play for some more delicate assisted therapies – phobias, for example. “With virtual reality, we are able to get the person to counter this phobia using avatars,” she illustrates.

All solutions on the Cogni platform are based on evidence from research and clinically validated, assures the entrepreneurial researcher.

Emotional intelligence

Still in the pre-commercialization phase, the Cogni platform has been tested for two years with professionals and their clients.

“We are in line with the market, but we get paid,” explains Emmanuelle Michel.

Cogni is used by a few groups of a dozen clients each, and around fifty individual clients. Recommended by a California business development firm, community service organizations in Maryland expressed interest.

Emmanuella Michel now wants to introduce artificial intelligence into her platform to increase its efficiency. A recent grant allowed him to hire three AI students. “Within a week, they will be with us. We will be a team of six to eight employees. Little step by little step, we take big steps. »

As if the mother of two daughters had time to spare, she is also an ambassador for the organization Computers for Excellence Canada, which redistributes refurbished computers to under-resourced schools.

Toiture Québec expands by acquisition

Toiture Québec welcomes Les Entreprises J. Chabot under its roof. On an upward slope, the roofing contractor of all types, both residential and industrial, has just acquired its counterpart, specializing in flat and low-slope roofs. Entreprises J. Chabot was founded in 1992 by Jocelyn Chabot. The company’s current shareholders, Jocelyn Chabot and its president Tony Lessard, will remain managers at Groupe Toiture Québec. With this additional contingent of around fifty people, Toiture Québec will have more than 200 employees, under the direction of its partners Jimmy Landry, Nicolas Abbatiello, Melissa Martinova and Jeffrey Caron. The Quebec company, which now covers the entire province, is barely 11 years old.

Sad news…

The rubber duck has sunk, alas… We talked about RubberDuck Digital Development in this section in August 2022, when this small company, founded in 2020, had raised substantial investments totaling $1 million. The company, which developed an easy-to-use platform for creating websites, then employed around twenty people. In a post published a few days ago on LinkedIn, its founder Jonathan Thiffault announced the bankruptcy of RubberDuck, “a company in full growth which enjoyed a good reputation in Quebec”, he wrote. RubberDuck was flailing. “The year 2023 represented for us the perfect storm which will have overcome our hard work by a series of events worthy of the most absurd and difficult to believe Hollywood scenarios,” he adds. He mentions “the inexplicable loss of important tax credits, the rapid increase in interest rates on our loans, the disruptions in our board of directors, the distractions of the CNESST and the surprise intervention of the Office Quebecois for the Protection of the French Language”. He plans to get together with his loved ones and do what he has always done: “learn lessons from the past, come up with a plan for the future and put it into action.”

Read the article “The revolutionary duck”

The Grand Duc collections are taking off again

Great, Grand Duke will survive! The collections of Éditions Grand Duc, specializing in educational materials intended for primary and secondary students and adult education, have just been acquired by Éditions CEC. Éditions Grand Duc constituted a division of the Éducalivres Group, which ceased its activities a few months ago. Formerly Éditions HRW, founded in 1966, they adopted this avian company name in 2006. “From now on, schools will be able to order the Grand Duc collections from us and will be able to receive their educational materials for the next school year,” the company said in a press release. general director of Éditions CEC, Martin Vallières. Themselves founded in 1956, Éditions CEC form a division of Quebecor Media. The Grand Duc collections bring together essential manuals such as Financial education in 35 questions.

THE NUMBER

$1,171,446.90

The company Les constructions LCS 2012 was ordered to pay fines totaling $1,171,446.90 within 60 days for having failed to remit QST and GST amounts to the tax authorities, plus a few other oversights. Its owner was sentenced to a suspended prison sentence of two years less a day.