BLINKIN SELECTED FOR EUR 2.5M GRANT BY EUROPEAN INNOVATION COUNCIL FOR EMPOWERING SELF-SERVICE IN TECH SUPPORT

BlinkIn will receive the EUR 2.5 million EIC grant for their vision of ‘Giving the World a Help Button’, building an interactive Visual Assistant for people’s smartphones. The Visual Assistant will enable individuals on the spot to help themselves when facing technical challenges at home or at work, e.g. when operating their new TV or when troubleshooting an industrial HVAC system.

BlinkIn is among 75 European companies and deep-tech projects selected by the EIC Accelerator to receive funding and has been selected for the blended finance route which includes additional EU equity investment to establish a long-term partnership.

“I’ve always believed that our idea will have broad societal impact and relevance”, says BlinkIn CEO, Josef Suess. “Getting the EIC as early investors behind our mission is a great validation and we’re excited to take on this challenge. Especially as a bootstrapped startup, we really appreciate the boost this grant and investment will give us!”

The funding will go toward growing their engineering team internationally and making substantial investments in product development over the course of the following 18 months. 

At the same time, BlinkIn will stay very close to the market: ramping up sales for its ready-to-use remote support platform for Enterprise and SME customers, and continuing the search for ecosystem partners in OEM and Insurance as well as in the specialist fields of Conversational AI, Computervision, Smart Sensors, among others.

Over the last 2 years, BlinkIn has been working with leading brands on validating and enhancing their innovative approach for B2B2C tech support in the field. Their visual collaboration platform enables consumers to rely on self-service for technical problems and businesses to offer effective remote-first customer service on a global scale. For a frictionless user experience and instant availability in the moment of need, all modules for the BlinkIn platform are web-based and run on standard smartphones.

“Getting the EIC as early investors behind our mission is a great validation and we’re excited to take on this challenge.”

About BlinkIn

BlinkIn specialises in web-based collaboration for visual and frictionless tech support between company experts and customers. The company was founded in November 2020 in Munich, Germany, with the goal of ‘Giving the World a Help Button’: empowering people to solve technical problems on their own using a visual assistant on their smartphones. BlinkIn is also the winner of the Stellantis Startup Award and Top 25 in the Entrepreneurship World Cup.

About the European Innovation Council

With a budget of EUR 10.1 billion, the European Innovation Council (EIC) is the premier innovation initiative for all EU Member States. Its mission is to identify, develop, and scale up game-changing ideas and disruptive technologies. Over EUR 1.7 billion in funding opportunities are made available in 2022 through the EIC Work Programme with a maximum of EUR 2.5 million per individual grant. The recipients are selected from approx. 1,000 full applicants through a meticulous process over several months, involving several stages of expert assessment and interviews.

Visit EIC website: https://eic.ec.europa.eu

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Media Relations:

Reinhard Kurz

reinhard@blinkin.io

+49 176 24520024

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BlinkIn GmbH

Raphaelweg 5

85625 Baiern

Germany

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