Strap Tech wins Innovation Awards at SXSW against 60 worldwide technology and innovation projects
Strap tech was the only project to win two awards; winners of the Wearable Tech category and the Best in Show award.
The Innovation Awards are part of the South By SouthWest Festival, the most relevant interactive, technology and entrepreneurship event worldwide.
Last Saturday, March 10, the competition for the Innovation Awards was held within the interactive South By SouthWest Festival. The festival brought together more than 250,000 people including artists, entrepreneurs and personalities of the technology industry in the City of Austin, Texas.
The Innovation Awards laureate each year the projects that bring the greatest innovations to connect the world. More than 60 global projects showcased their developments and were awarded at a Ceremony in the Austin Convention Center on Monday, March 14.
Diego Roel, CEO and Founder of Strap tech, Ben Eynon, CTO, Natalia Ferriz, Marketing Director and Javier de León, product designer, attended the competition where they were evaluated by more than a dozen judges from around the world. Ara is the device of the Mexican company, which will replace the white cane for millions of blind and visually impaired people.
Strap tech has developed its technology based on haptic language to be able to grant real autonomy with a universal understanding. Through the use of sensors, obstacles are detected at high, medium and low levels, to guide a blind person with vibration patterns on the straps and in the device itself.
"We do not tell people exactly what they will encounter, but we do warn them so they can make better decisions on the move, thus reducing by up to 80% accidents that the blind and visually impaired people face on a daily basis and make their autonomy increase by 50%", says Strap tech.
The company was founded 2 years ago and has already raised seed capital for almost 2 million dollars and is shaping up towards series A with some of the most important international funds. Today they have two offices, one in the city of Austin, Texas and the development office in Guadalajara, Jalisco; with almost 30 employees.
"This award represents great validation yes, but let's not forget that our main purpose is bigger than any of us who work at Strap. Once we are able to give an ARA to an entire generation of blind children, this technology will be alive for decades to come. We are revolutionizing a whole industry and that is worthy of making history," said Diego Roel, founder of Strap tech and young twenty-year-old entrepreneur 20.
Ara won the Wearable Tech category for the startup and they were also awarded with the Best in Show the prize where all the categories compete in all the projects (more than 60) being the only Mexican project in the competition.
