Be My Eyes raises $2.8 million
Be My Eyes, a mobile app that allows anyone to assist visually impaired people through live video calls, has raised $2.8 million in Series A funding led by Cultivation Capital. The investment allows the company to further develop its unique “purpose and profit” business model while keeping the visual support service free and unlimited for all visually impaired users.
Be My Eyes solves a very simple problem for users: it calls up a real person, on-demand, to describe what’s in front of a blind user’s camera. Initially supported entirely by volunteers, Be My Eyes recently announced it would begin partnering with companies to provide expert-level support through a new feature in the app (Specialized Help). Microsoft signed on as Be My Eyes’ first video support partner in 2018, followed by Google, Lloyds Banking Group, and Procter & Gamble, who now all provide video customer support to the BME community, which spans more than 175 countries. Companies can provide Specialized Help globally or by region, and support services are free to Be My Eyes users.
With a community of users that has doubled in size each year since 2015, Be My Eyes’ “micro-volunteering” platform has become beloved amongst blind and sighted users alike. Fueled by inspiring stories and viral social media posts of strangers connecting across oceans to help one another, the small startup has amassed what amounts to the world’s largest global community of visually impaired people (almost 200,000), and a volunteer community many times that size (more than 3.5M). With a vast population of aging boomers and an increasing emphasis on accessibility and inclusive design worldwide, serving people with all levels of eyesight is not just charity – it’s good business.
“As we grow and age, we all need help seeing at some point. It’s been a pleasure to see that not only do people want to give their time to support this large population – but companies want to make their customer service offerings more accessible. For them, we’ve built a simple but beautiful tool.” – Be My Eyes CEO Christian Erfurt, who co-founded the company with a legally blind craftsman named Hans Jørgen Wiberg in 2014.
