While most companies in Tunisia's aerospace sector are foreign-run, Telnet is an example of a home-grown technology start-up. It provides engineering services for several European and US manufacturers, and has grown in 17 years to a workforce of 600 - the majority engineers - with four sites in Tunisia and offices in France, Germany, the USA and Dubai.
Mohamed Frikha - a former executive with French telecoms company Alcatel, who had run its Tunisian subsidiary while still in his twenties - founded Telnet in 1994 with seven employees. The business won its first major contract - with Sagem - a year later (successor company Safran is still its biggest customer), and has gone on to develop software and components for clients in the automotive, smart card and security, telecoms and aerospace markets. Telnet makes no branded products of its own and rarely owns the intellectual property to any technology. Instead, explains Mondher Makni, chief marketing officer, its added value comes with the expertise of its engineers - almost all Tunisian nationals - who work at computers in Telnet's futuristic-looking head office near Tunis airport. Project teams for different customers are on separate floors or buildings.
ULTIMATE TEST
The company floated on the tiny Tunisian stock market in April (it had planned to list in February, but the political upheavals forced it to postpone), the first technology business to do so. Next year, it plans an initial public offering in Paris or London. "That will be the ultimate test," says Makni. "We are taking the group more and more on to an international level, and the plan is to be more visible."
Tunisia's university system provides a steady supply of recruits, although Makni admits finding graduates with "the right avionics profile" is more difficult. It tends to take on those with more general engineering degrees and provide "rigorous internal training". Many of those joining are Tunisians who have studied or even emigrated abroad and are keen to return home, and Telnet has attended job fairs for this purpose in Canada, Germany and France. About a quarter of its engineers are female.
"Telnet is a Tunisian success story," says Wassim Srarfi, head of aerospace association GITAS. "It is the model we need to follow. Technology is the future of our country. The country needs to develop other companies to make Tunisia an economy of science and technology.
"Every time the country receives an important international visitor they take him to Telnet. We are very proud of them."
Source: Flight International
