Project Wipe One Line: Wipe helps visually impaired people in their everyday life in orientation and obstacle avoidance and reducing the feeling of insecurity and stress level. Company Name: Wipe URL: www.projectwipe.com Industry: Hardware/Health Employees: 0 Founded: Jul 2014 Contact György Tamás Email:
[email protected] Mobile: +40-755-869-623 Financial Information Funding stage: pre-funding Monthly burn rate: $100 Capital Seeking: $50000 Management Kovács Noémi, co-founder Szabó Tamás, co-founder Advisors: Dr. Ing. Septimiu Crișan, hardware engineer, university profesor Partners Institute of Visually Impaired People Cluj-Napoca
Business summary: Wipe builds hardware gadget for visually impaired people to help them in their everyday life to explore the world around them without the fear of getting lost or hitting any obstacle. The development of the project is self-financed. We seek investors for accelerating the development and product launch. Problem: Visually impaired people need more focus and concentration to move in the city than solve the daily tasks at the office or at home. This surplus of concentration leads to higher stress levels and to the fear to walk around in the city. Solution: By creating a wearable device on which the user can rely by having real-time feedback about any obstacles in the way and his/her exact position, giving to the wearer a plus of confidence and reduces stress level. Project Wipe combines GPS, SLAM, IMU and image processing algorithms to create this the missing support for these people. Management: Co-founders Szabó Tamás, Kovács Noémi and György Tamás have a synergistic combination of skills. Szabó Tamás is a hardware engineer working for big companies like European Space Agency, Toshiba and the German army, being the guide force in FPGA development. Kovács Noémi is a psychologist working with visually impaired people, she is our data analyst, who evaluates the feedback given by the testers. György Tamás has worked in different research centers across Europe working on projects for Airbus or Siemens, his experienced in product and algorithm development. Target Market: In 2013 the European Blind Union reported over 30 million blind and partially sighted person in Europe, which means an average of 1 in 30 Europeans experience sight loss. Competitors: Lot of companies and universities focus on solving problems related to blind people. The University of Tokyo and the University of Oxford are working on similar products as we. Products on the market which helps blind people are iGlasses, AuxPeco and UltraCANE. Competitive Advantages: Our system is wearable and has a high precision in object detection and avoidance focusing on outdoor scenes. We are working for patenting our system in the near future. Sales/Marketing Strategy: We are seeking for partnerships with institutes for blinds and with health insurance companies across Europe. In addition, google adwords and online ads drive prospects to projectwipe.com where they can automatically sign up for getting news and informations about our product. Business Model: Wipe generates primary revenue by selling the hardware with a price range between ($350 - $500). The secondary revenue stream is a monthly fee (aprox. $10) which provides live map and the acces to the SLAM database. Financials: Not yet available.
