Interview with Sotiris Kokkinos, co-founder and CEO of FEAC Engineering

Sotiris Kokkinos, CEO of FEAC, is a leader with a passion for harnessing the power of technology to transform industries and drive innovation. He holds an MSc in Electrical Engineering & Computer Technology and has more than 15 years of experience in the technology sector. Sotiris manages a team with an unwavering commitment to pushing the boundaries of what's possible and has led FEAC to consistently deliver cutting-edge solutions to clients. We met with Sotiris and talked about FEAC and his professional and personal journey so far. Here's what he told us.
Tell us a few things about FEAC. How did it all start? How did you discover the market opportunity for your solution, and where are you today?
The idea dates back to 2014, when my brother and co-founder of FEAC, Haris decided to return to Greece after 4 years of working as a Mechanical Engineer at CERN. At CERN, he gained great experience in the field of simulations. Moreover, he observed that most research organizations, institutes, and hi-tech companies started looking for trusted partners to outsource their simulation studies needs. Myself, I was working in some well-known, hi-tech companies in Greece but it was the time of the huge financial crisis that hit our country, as a result, there was a big cost cut in employees and resources. Thus, we tried to find out how we could create something ourselves and this is how FEAC came to life.
We founded FEAC Engineering, an engineering company, highly specialized in Simulation Driven Product Development & physics-based Digital Twins. We are based in Patras with offices in Athens, and we operate in the global market by developing and providing specialized simulation software and consulting services, to solve challenging & complex engineering problems. We are active in several industry sectors such as Maritime, Aerospace & Defence, Oil & Gas, Energy, Construction etc. Due to the company’s high expertise in Simulation, Siemens Digital Industries Software has also appointed us as an official authorized smart, software and technology partner of its CAE (Computer Aided Engineering) portfolio for the South-East European Region. Moreover, FEAC is now involved in some very challenging, hi-tech global projects being an important partner for some of the biggest companies and research organizations in the world.
How do you differentiate from other similar offers in the market? What value does FEAC bring to partners?
At FEAC we stand as the premier choice for cutting-edge solutions across the entire product development spectrum, from initial concept design to the development of holistic Digital Twins. Our commitment to excellence shines through our expertise in physics-based numerical simulations and AI-enhanced Digital twins, cultivated over years of dedicated work in the field.
Our vision is to drive innovation and shape the future through the power of engineering. With our deep expertise and thorough understanding of scientific principles, we deliver cutting-edge solutions at every stage of product development – from conceptual design and performance simulation to prototype testing and operational conditions. We are here to ensure that the features our customers build into their products will operate as designed in real conditions. With our expertise in Simulations and Digital Twins, we help our customers to minimize costly physical testing, accelerate their time to market, and enable game-changing design innovations in a low-risk virtual environment by running thousands of different scenarios to find the optimum.
What would you consider to have been (or are) your biggest challenge so far?
Being a company based in Greece, starting from scratch in the worst financial period for the country in recent history, having as a field of expertise something that still is considered an “exotic activity”, operating in a fully competitive global environment, and manage at the end to have an established entity well known for its quality, trust, and ability to deliver, was not just a challenge but something that for many sounded unachievable.
It was difficult to convince some of the biggest companies in the world, that a small company in Greece could become their partner and an important link in their supply chain. This was the case for most of the Greek companies founded in the last decade.
What are the biggest learnings from your journey so far?
This is a continuous journey and our mission is to never end it. During this journey there are good but also a lot of bad times. Try to take the most out of them in order to guide you to your next steps. Those experiences will help you enhance, enforce, or even rebuild the mission and vision of your company. Believe in yourself, learn from the good times but mostly from your failures and mistakes, and build your success on them.
The origins of FEAC lead back to your university years. How easy / or difficult, do you think is for researchers to commercialize the product of their work in our country?
Our University – the University of Patras - provided us with the most important foundation, the knowledge base, to be innovative, and to think extroverted and out of the box. But, I would say that our origin mostly comes from our early professional steps, as young engineers in some of the most well-known research institutes and hi-tech companies.
Nevertheless, as the nature of our activities and FEAC’s DNA is well connected with the research and academic community, it was and still is difficult to bring great ideas out from the academic environment to the business world and create a commercial product or even software. But things are getting better and I believe this will improve further. There are already some great success cases in Greece and more are to come. In my opinion, the mentality has changed, a lot of investments have been settled in the local community, huge companies are now establishing their branches in the country, and VCs and investors have their eyes on Greek companies. We just need to believe in our ideas and understand that our market is global, and the opportunities are out there, thus it is up to us to catch them.