Benjamin Bejbaum cringes at the mere mention of the word “copy-cat”. Indeed, if the affable 30-year-old co-founder of the French video download site Dailymotion has a pet peeve, it would be hearing his start-up being described as a copy-cat version of YouTube.

As Mr Bejbaum likes to point out, Dailymotion came online at around the same time as its American rival, which was snapped up by Google last year for $1.65bn.