Embry, Armenia Startup Academy alum, closes pre-seed round led by SmartGateVC
- May 17, 2018
- 3 min read
Armenia Startup Academy is excited to announce that SmartGateVC led the investment round in Embry, a startup tapping into the future of wearable devices to meet the evolving needs of weight control. Radik Verdyan, advisor to CEO at Citymobil, co-invested in this pre-seed round.
Embry is a thin smart insole with built-in scale designed for sustaining healthy weight. It’s a patent-pending technology, which unlike the existing activity trackers and smart insoles in the market, does automated weight tracking and alerts weight gain. Based on accurate activity tracking and analysis of how activities impact weight change, it provides personalized nutrition, physical activity, and healthy habit coaching via a user-friendly application. Embry aims at solving today’s global overweight epidemic as after dieting, 70% of people gain back more weight than they originally had lost. It’s a revolutionary solution for busy people, who need hustle free weight control.
"In very early stage you invest in team and vision. Embry’s vision is just huge and we know founders for about 3 years already. We see constant progress in their work and, simply, this is a bet on people with incredible growth trajectory!" - says SmartGateVC co-founder Hambardzum Kaghketsyan.
"We have long way to go together along with leveraging SmartGateVC’s network and resources to make the company successful" - says SmartGateVC co-founder Ashot Arzumanyan.
This investment marks development of angel investment culture in Armenia on the one hand, and demonstrates the positive effect of deleveraging startup investment risks by constructive intervention of the European Union on the other. Furthermore, part of the product development happens in the Vanadzor Technology Center, which is an example of how companies can benefit from the potential of Armenia’s regions.
"Thanks to IMG (Innovation Matching Grant) sponsored by EU and the considerable support of Armenia Startup Academy’s pre-acceleration program, we managed to bootstrap and become investable startup. Now this pre-seed investment will help us to productize our lab prototype and experiment with different go-to-market strategies. Having SmartGateVC team on our board empowers us to act wiser and move faster." - says Embry co-founder and CEO Sargis Karapetyan.
"Embry has a great market that is hungry for a technology driven startup." - says SmartGateVC funding advisor Vazgen Hakobjanyan.
For more information and to be the first one to know when Embry is live follow this link.
About SmartGateVC Backed by Tim Draper and seasoned tech entrepreneurs, SmartGateVC is a venture capital firm targeting Armenian tech companies in Artificial Intelligence, Security and Internet of Things.
About Radik Verdyan Radik Verdyan is Advisor to CEO at Citymobil, a leading Russia based P2P transportation company. The company recently closed a $35m venture round to expand in the Russian market.
About Armenia Startup Academy The Armenia Startup Academy is a Catalyst Foundation project implemented in the framework of “Support to SME Development (EU-SMEDA)” Project, which is co-funded by the European Union and the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ) and implemented by GIZ’s Private Sector Development in South Caucasus Program. SMEDA is part of the EU4Business and EU4Innovation initiatives of the European Union.
About IMG grants “Innovation Matching Grants – Business Development Support for innovative technology Start-ups” grant competition is implemented in the scope of the "Support to SME Development in Armenia" (EU-SMEDA) project, in cooperation with Enterprise Incubator Foundation (EIF). It aims at supporting technology-oriented ventures and increasing the competitiveness of existing SMEs by providing financial and technical assistance to develop new innovative products and services for domestic and global markets. The first cycle of the Innovation Matching Grants started in January 2018 with nine companies having received funding of up to 50,000 Euros. In March 2018, EU-SMEDA and EIF have jointly announced the second cycle of the Innovation Matching Grants competition. Here nine more grants will be provided with an amount of up to 35,000 Euros each with a duration of nine months.
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