Less than four months after raising a Seed round for a smartglass-enabled navigation service to guide visually impaired users through unfamiliar neighborhoods, Aira.IO has raised a $2.5 million Series A round. The company has said it plans to bring the platform to market later this year.
A new investor, Felicis Ventures, took part but returning Seed round investors Lux Capital and ARCH Venture Partners led the Series A round. Angel investors also participated.
Aira.IO developed a dashboard that connects Google Glass. Trained navigation agents can gain the visual perspective of the smartglass user through a dashboard that provides live data streams from cameras, GPS and other sensor systems. Navigators provide audio instructions to guide them to their destination. Along with family, friends and volunteers, the company also hopes to make veterans into navigators. It provides live data streams from cameras, GPS, and other sensor systems from wearable platforms.
In response to emailed questions, Aira.io Co-founder and CEO Suman Kanuganti said the target date for launch is late 2016. It plans to use some of the funding to add 12-15 people, including navigation agents and some “key hires.” To date, it has hired six navigation agents and plans to scale to 10 prior to launch.
In an interview last year, Kanuganti expressed interest in hiring veterans to fill agent guide roles. He said it had made good on that statement and was in the process of training them.
Asked for an update on its progress Kanuganti said, “We kicked off Phase 5, our next phase of trials where users take product home and use whenever they like. We got a couple of major technology breakthroughs.”
