WeWALK, a London, UK-based provider of a smartphone connected ‘smart cane’ for the visually impaired, raised £2M in funding.
The round was led by Nesta Impact Investments, with participation from King’s Health Partners (KHP Ventures) and APY Ventures, joined by notable angel investors including Manchester City captain İlkay Gündoğan.
The company intends to use the funds to evolve its technology and grow its global market presence.
Led by CEO Gökhan Meriçliler, WeWALK provides a GPS-enabled smart cane which connects to a smartphone app to make navigation easier, safer and more accessible for the 253 million people worldwide who are visually impaired. The smart cane can detect obstacles and vibrate to help the user avoid them, provide navigation prompts, and update users with key details like bus and train timings or which restaurants are nearby; radically changing how people with visual impairments can move around public spaces. The cane already has thousands of users across over 59 countries.
Working in partnership with Imperial College London and the Royal National Institute of Blind People (RNIB), the team will use this investment to develop “computer vision” capabilities for the smart cane; allowing users to be given far more information about what’s in front of them. The £2m investment follows an award of £1.7m in grant funding recently secured by the consortium from Innovate UK’s Designed for Ageing challenge.
FinSMEs
08/12/2022