A.I – Eazilee

Envision recently secured €1.5 Million to scale their award-winning AI powered app and smart glasses solutions for the blind and visually impaired.

The investment round includes 3 impact funds – Existing investor 4impact is joined by ABN AMRO and Hungary based Impact Ventures, along with strategic investors from Operator.Exchange. Funding will be used to accelerate growth to support as many blind and visually impaired people globally.

Envision is the award-winning AI-assistive technology company that empowers blind and visually impaired people with greater independence and access to the visual information around them. Their AI-powered software extracts different types of information from images and speaks them out loud, enabling blind and low-vision users to read documents at work, recognize their friends, find personal belongings at home, use public transportation, and more — all fully independently.

AI-assistive software can read all kinds of text, including digital and handwritten text, newspaper, books and product labels, in more than 60 languages, recognize faces, describe scenes, detect colors, find objects, and so much more. Envision’s software is available for use in two different ways: on assistive smart glasses as embedded, hands-free technology (currently in partnership with Google Glass with an ability to add different smart glasses in future), and as an iOS and Android smartphone app. Their products are currently being used in more than 200 countries and the Company is adding new distributors in all corners of the world on a monthly basis. Their products are designed together with and for the blind and visually impaired to optimise user experience.

Envision will use the funds to scale-up their team in the Hague to support their plans of making their products available all over the world. They will expand their R&D team to further develop and improve their cutting edge AI and make more meaningful visual information accessible to the blind and visually impaired. There is also going to be an increase in marketing activities to further enhance the sales of the app and the glasses through a network of distributors around the world. Karthik Mahadevan, the co-founder and CEO, said “We are excited to enter into this new phase where we can accelerate our mission of making all kinds of visual information accessible to everyone. We are just at the beginning of what is possible and the new partners and resources have now provided us with fuel to launch this product to its full potential.”

Envision Glasses enable the wearer to utilise the following features

Turn any text into speech with Scan Text. Be it handwritten notes, books or your favourite recipes. In over 60 languages.
Call someone you trust to share your point of view, with Video Call. For a second opinion while shopping or exploring a new path.
Read any short text that’s in front of you with Instant Text. Find everything from house numbers, the products you love or even your favourite vinyl.
Get detailed scene descriptions anywhere. So you know what’s around, every step of the way. Find your colleagues or friends in an instant, with Face Recognition.
Find missing items in no time with Object Recognition
Sort laundry easily with Color Detection
Dive into that book you want to read with Batch Scan
Share the information you come across with Export Text

Envision glasses currently retail for € 3268.91 (incl taxes) and come in both a standard Titanium Lense free frame or Smith Optics Designer Spectacles you can replace with custom prescription lenses.

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