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A design team created as part of the incubator programme at hopes to inaugurate a “new era” in global toilet design.

Their ideas for the company, Trone, were initially developed in “the world’s biggest start-up campus” known as , where HEC runs programmes. It is there that they will install their first eight customised toilets in a new restaurant called Felicita, which forms part of the culinary empire (itself run by two HEC alumni).

“Toilets have an amazing history,” said Trone chief executive officer Hugo Volpei. “And [they are] so central to our lives. There are studies showing that in an average lifespan a human spends an entire year in this space. And yet we spend more time choosing our sofa or cupboard than the toilet we use so often.”

The toilets at Station F have been given unusual names such as “Origines”, “Le Sacré”, “Arc-en-ciel” and “Chalet”. Trone’s longer-term plans to make their products “desirable, identifiable and differentiable” include a second generation of toilets that will use artificial intelligence, digital technology and robotics, as well as essential oil sprays, to “facilitate self-cleaning mechanisms”.

jack.grove@timeshighereducation.com