The Côte d’Azur-based designer of smartglasses dedicated to the prevention of falling asleep at the wheel and averting falls receives €2.5 million in its first financing round from ACG Management, Turenne Capital, and several business angels.
Smartglasses are able to prevent drivers from falling asleep and can inhibit the elderly from falling down. The technology of Ellcie Healthy has attracted early investors, who have injected €2.5 million. Supported by Pax Corporate Finance, the start-up was founded three years ago on the Côte d’Azur by Philippe Peyrard, the former Chief Operating Officer of the Atol network of opticians. The company is now opening its capital to ACG Management, Turenne Capital, via the fund Région Sud Investissement, and business angels. “Our solutions rapidly interested various players such as Generali, Optic 2000, and Valeo. This allowed us to wait for the product launch before raising funds”, says Philippe Peyrard, who was highly involved in the launch a few years ago of the Téou eyeglasses by Atol that can be geolocated by phone.
The marketing phase for Ellcie Healthy’s smart frames began in late March throughout the 1,200 Optic 2000 stores. Fifteen sensors measure the blinking and wide opening of the eyes, head movements, brightness and ambient temperature. The data thus collected is then sent by Bluetooth to a mobile phone and processed by an artificial intelligence algorithm. Even before the commercial launch, the company of 20 employees in Villeneuve-Loubet had achieved revenue of just under €1 million for service contracts in 2018.
The next application to be launched in the coming months will focus on detecting falls in the elderly. A version capable of anticipating falls will be ready by 2020, as well as new features such as activity tracking, for example. International development is part of the company’s on-going projects, especially in North America.
