Meet Kevin Mandrick, selected in the first call for applications with his project Made in Tracker.
Tell us briefly about yourself and your background!
I am a gold prospector from a four-generation family tradition, and I have always been interested in gold traceability. That’s how Made in Tracker was born: to have a way to prove the true story behind materials and products in order to understand their real impact on the world. I’m self-taught and a serial entrepreneur. I earned a PhD in neuroergonomics and spent 17 years in academic research, innovation, and R&D for both startups and large companies. I volunteer at two Repair Cafés and go from place to place helping extend the life of objects and reduce the impact of consumption. To me, the product passport is the key to uncovering the truth behind a product’s story. But we still need to develop and democratize this solution. That’s why Made in Tracker is committed to accelerating the transition to a more circular and sustainable world.
How did you find out about SCAIRA?
Through information shared by the Aerospace Valley competitiveness cluster, of which we are a partner.
What stage is your startup currently at?
We are in the MVP/iteration/early traction phase in the field of compliance and traceability for medical devices; MVP from a art viewpoint; pilot phase in reuse in the aeronautics and construction sectors; demo phase in the jewelry industry; and R&D phase in trustworthy AI.
What is the nature of your project, and what problem does it aim to solve?
Made in Tracker is a self-service digital product passport (DPP) generator designed to help SMEs remain compliant. It is the leading platform for product transparency, smart compliance, and communication for SMEs. It offers a unified traceability platform and a trusted DPP solution. Our services support digital product passports for a sustainable circular industry. The long-term vision is to become the leading platform for product life cycle transparency, helping businesses navigate sustainability and compliance challenges.
The project addresses the need for continuous compliance, as each industry/product must continuously demonstrate compliance. SMEs face several challenges: time-consuming and error-prone compliance processes, non-compliance risks, increasing costs, and erosion of stakeholder trust. Product life cycle data is fragmented, siloed, and disconnected across supply chain actors and IT systems. This results in document-based communication, non-interoperable systems, the lack of a unified product-level traceability standard, blind spots in lifecycle data, and time-consuming, error-prone compliance reporting. Additionally, there is growing environmental awareness and a decline in trust due to false claims and greenwashing. The EU is imposing strict regulations on this topic. Our goal and long-term vision: to become the leading platform for product lifecycle transparency.
Which SCAIRA services have you chosen?
Finance, pitch, and strategy. As a deeptech startup, it’s difficult to understand how to conduct an R&D financing project while trying to identify a distant market, especially considering the regulatory framework that will come into effect in 2027.
What are your short-term objectives during the acceleration programme?
To raise €1.5M by the end of the programme, find our first 30 customers, and iterate within our initial target market: the medical sector.
Who is your target market, and what customer need are you addressing?
Target market: SMEs—especially underserved ones lacking internal quality/regulatory teams—that must comply with traceability regulations and are cost- and time-sensitive. Our first market includes over 100 French manufacturers of Class I medical devices who need to comply with MDR 2017/745 regulations and want a solution for managing UDI (unique device identifiers) and connecting to the European EUDAMED platform. Market expansion is planned into other European industries such as aerospace/automotive, construction, retail (luxury), textiles, electronics, furniture, and toys—all affected by the Ecodesign Sustainable Product Regulation (ESPR) and, more broadly, all circular economy stakeholders who need a digital passport for their unique products.
The addressed customer need: Helping SMEs stay compliant in the face of continuous compliance requirements. We solve time-consuming and error-prone compliance processes, mitigate non-compliance risks, reduce costs, and rebuild stakeholder trust. Our platform enables product transparency, smart compliance, and communication through unified traceability. It helps SMEs achieve a 10x ROI and eliminate “busywork.” It also addresses the growing desire among SMEs to treat traceability as a competitive advantage (80% want this) and improve customer access to traceability data (60% want this).
What are your main current challenges?
Securing more human resources and financial means that match the ambitions of the project.
Do you already have a team?
Yes, four people of four nationalities (Japan, Morocco, Brazil, France) working full-time. Myself, the CEO, PhD, and self-taught entrepreneur with a background in science and innovation. I’m the driving force behind our mission to build trustworthy data narratives. My co-founder Adrien Lemaire, senior software architect, is building a robust and user-friendly platform that meets real compliance needs. We also have a strategic designer with strong skills in simplifying complex systems based on business needs and an AI engineer who developed our explainable algorithms for data tracking and evidence generation.
Bonus: What question would you like to be asked?
Can everything really be traced with our solution? Yes. I don’t understand why people don’t question the origin of materials when walking into a jewelry store—when they could be traceable. At the end of the value chain, there are communities and biodiversity paying the price. Traceability is already effective in pharmaceuticals and food; we just need to apply the same approach to all objects. Consumption involves extraction, transformation, transport, use, and disposal—yet today we should be focused on accelerating the circular economy across all industrial sectors. There’s still work to be done.
