25 August 2016, India :
Bengaluru-based Witworks has raised an undisclosed amount of seed investment from Fireside Ventures, Investopad, and P39 Capital.
The round also saw participation from Anupam Mittal (Shaadi.com Founder), Pranay Jivrajka (COO, Ola), Maninder Gulati (Chief Strategy Officer, Oyo Rooms), Abhinav Sinha (COO, Oyo Rooms), and top executives from ITC.
Founded by IIT-Kharagpur graduates Somnath Meher, Ankit DP, and Chandrashekhar Iyer, the company manufactures its products in Shenzhen. The company’s advantage, according to Ankit, comes from how it differs from the Apple Watch, Android Wear, Samsung Gear S2, and Sony’s Smartwatch 3 — it’s not tied to a mobile phone, so instead of replicating the features for a mobile device to be worn on the wrist, Witworks has the opportunity to build its products from scratch.
Somnath Meher, Co-founder and CEO of Witworks, said Wearables, especially watches, are at a very interesting stage at this point of time. The technology is in place, and there’s enough eagerness amongst consumers, but lack of relevant use cases, ease of interaction, and genuine design empathy have prevented them from taking off. With a blend of technology and design, we are looking to solve that and make smart wearables ubiquitous.
“The technology (for smartwatches) is in place, and there’s enough eagerness amongst consumers. But lack of relevant used case, ease of interaction and genuine design-empathy have prevented them from taking off. With a blend of technology and design, we are looking to solve that and make smart-wearables ubiquitous,” said Meher in a statement.
The company has developed both—the hardware and the software of the device. The voice-enabled operating system of Blink, called Marvin, is developed on Android.
The device, due to be launched by the end of September, will have use cases beyond fitness and push notifications, said Meher in an interview. It will work as a contextual device that shows customized information relevant to the user.
Workwit aims to bring at least 20,000 units of Blink to the market by December, make it available only through Witworks website and pricing it around $200, Meher added.
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