Rare hardware start-up aims to provide smart glasses for the blind

After beginning as a student’s development project, Visionear has become one of Thailand’s rare hardware tech start-ups. 

Nuntipat Narkthong, founder and chief executive officer of Visionear, started it as a senior student’s project at King Mongkut’s University of Technology Thonburi. 

His project won a lot of competitions, including the silver prize from i-CREATe 2015 in Singapore, third place in the National Electronic and Computer Technology Centre’s National Software Contest, winner of the Microsoft Imagine Cup, and winner of the Thailand ICT Award.

But winning awards was not enough – Nuntipat wanted to turn his project into a sustainable business rather than a research and development project sitting on a shelf. He believed it could become a social enterprise. And this year, he turned his project into a business with the support of DTAC Accelerate. 

“From a student’s project, we continued development including programming, acquiring users, and talking to investors,” he said. 

“Once we became a start-up, rather than being a student’s project, it needed to fit into the market and the law. When we were students, we just focused on the single angle of getting the development done; while we are a business, there are a lot of things we need to do.” 

The concept of Visionear is to be one of the world’s first providers of smart eyeglasses for visually impaired people. Visionear can take pictures of objects in front of the glasses, process them and explain them in Thai, English or Chinese.

Nuntipat said Visionear was currently in the closed beta stage. It is also in the product-design stage, as its technology is stable. He is looking for a manufacturer in Thailand to produce the device, with the hope of bringing the first version of Visionear to market by the end of this year. 

As a hardware device, Visionear needs a lot of development and testing before it is suitable for commercial production. That process is more costly than software development. 

Visionear has raised Bt1 million through meefund.com, a crowd-funding platform, enough to produce 1,000 units of the basic version of the device. This version can alert the wearer to eye-level obstacles.

These 1,000 units will be delivered to blind people by the end of the year. 

“From the first lot, we do not expect any revenue. The main objective is to validate our development,” Nuntipat said.

The next version of Visionear will add image recognition to the basic device’s obstacle-detection capabilities. It will help the blind to detect the colour of an object and whether lights are turned on or off, and to recognise banknotes and barcodes. 

The basic version uses embedded sensor technology to help the blind detect the things in front of them at a range of 1.5 metres. The battery lasts for up to 20-30 hours.

In the image-recognition version, the glasses are equipped with a tiny camera and image processor. 

“Visionear with image recognition can help the blind recognise how much money they are giving to people, and to turn off the lights when leaving or to turn them on at night,” Nuntipat said.

He said the image-recognition version was still under development. 

“As of now, the prototype of this version requires the user to carry the glasses along with a box holding the processor. Our design is still not complete. The battery is now able to operate for up to six hours.” 

He said it took a lot of effort and a lot of love to establish a hardware start-up, more so than with software. Moreover, Thailand has few facilities to support hardware start-ups. In the United States and China, there are ecosystems to help hardware start-ups make prototypes quickly. Doing the same thing in Thailand needs more time, more processes, and higher cost. Thus the developer of a hardware start-up must love it.

“We will sell our product for Bt4,000 through our partner, the Thailand Association of the Blind. We also plan to establish a business with the National Health Security Office.”

His passion is to turn his R&D project into a real useful device for the blind. In the first stage, he wants to come out with a commercial product and then to make these devices available outside Thailand. 

“In Thailand, there are around 300,000 blind people, while in the world, there are around 300 million. We are in a blue ocean, since we are focusing on a niche market, so there are a lot of opportunities for Visionear,” Nuntipat said.

He said Visionear received initial funding from the university. He also received US$25,000 (Bt873,000) as the winner of the Virginia Tech Corporate Research Center’s business pitch competition hosted by VT KnowledgeWorks. He turned the prize money into the initial capital for development.

“DTAC also invested seed money in Visionear as one of the final six teams in DTAC Accelerate Batch 4.” 

He decided to join DTAC Accelerate because he wanted coaching and support.