WeWALK raises £2m to “transform mobility” of visually impaired people with smartphone tech
WeWALK, the company behind the world’s first smartphone-connected ‘smart cane’ for the visually impaired, has announced a £2m investment round to help evolve its technology and grow its global market presence.
The round was led by Nesta Impact Investments, and joined by KHP Ventures, APY Ventures and Vestel Ventures. They were joined by angel investors which included the public via a Crowdcube raise and the Manchester City and German international footballer İlkay Gündoğan.
WeWALK’s first product, launched in 2019, was 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 was named one of TIME Magazine’s best inventions of 2019 and already has thousands of users across over 59 countries. With this funding, the WeWALK team is planning to push the capabilities of their tools even further.
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.
This £2m investment follows an award of £1.7m in grant funding recently secured by the consortium from Innovate UK’s Designed for Ageing challenge.
The ambition is to create advanced mobility tools that can read road signs, tell the user the number of the bus they’re about to board, inform them what objects are in their path, use facial recognition technology to prompt the user if someone they know is approaching them, and integrate with a wide-range of smart city technologies.
The WeWALK team, many of whom have lived experience of visual impairment, also plan to apply the technology to help other groups of people, such as creating adaptive mobility aids (such as walking sticks or frames) for older people or developing navigation tools to help people with dementia stay safe.
WeWALK has an ongoing partnership with Microsoft which is helping to advance the AI capabilities of their software.
Gökhan Meriçliler, WeWALK Co-founder & CEO, comments: “WeWALK’s products are already transforming the lives of visually impaired people across the world by improving their mobility, but there’s so much more to be done.
“We want to scale our business to reach a wider global audience and advance our technology to offer better, more meaningful information to visually impaired people, older people, and anyone that faces mobility challenges. This VC-backed round will enable us to unlock that next phase of development and transform mobility for millions.”
Tolly Humphreys, Investment Manager at Nesta Impact Investments, the social impact investors who led the round, comment: “One of our core missions at Nesta is to help people live longer, healthier lives – and together with Innovate UK, we are able to put both grant and equity investment into some of the most exciting companies tackling health in later life.
“We’re huge admirers of the WeWALK team and really excited about the potential of the product to enrich the lives of those with visual impairments. We’re looking forward to working with them to bring their products to a much wider audience.”
KHP Ventures Co-Managing Partner, Daniel Dickens, adds: “We’re excited to back WeWalk’s impressive founding team in their mission to help everyone in the visually impaired community to experience better mobility.
“As a joint venture from one of the largest healthcare systems in the UK, we look forward to supporting WeWALK to accelerate their traction and evidence base as they continue to grow in the coming years.”
WeWALK aims to enhance the mobility of visually impaired people, of which it says there are 253 million globally, and who rely on the white cane, a simple tool primarily designed to provide ground-level obstacle detection.
By equipping the white cane with modern technology and providing a fully accessible, custom-built navigation app, WeWALK aims to improve the safety and independence of visually impaired people.
WeWALK’s product development will be progressed through a number of high-profile R&D partnerships with the likes of Microsoft, Imperial College London and RNIB.
