OrCam looking at partnerships in India to expand reach of smart device for visually-impaired

Israel-based OrCam on Wednesday said it is looking at collaborations with organisations in India to expand the reach of its smart device that has been designed to help people with visual impairment. He added that seeing the product in action helps overcome a lot of scepticism in terms of the capability of the device and that the company is making inroads in India.

Israel-based OrCam on Wednesday said it is looking at collaborations with organisations in India to expand the reach of its smart device that has been designed to help people with visual impairment. The hand-held device reads text aloud from printed or digital surfaces like newspapers, books and computers. It does this offline without requiring an internet connection. The device, which can be attached to regular glasses, can also help recognise faces, identify products and currencies, among other use cases. ''In India, OrCam has been available for a little bit of time and at this point only in English. We're looking at developing it in more Indian languages depending on the demand,'' OrCam Technologies Public and Media Relations Director Rafi Fischer said during a briefing on Israeli innovative technological developments. He added that OrCam currently supports 25 languages globally. ''We have several distributors there (India) in some of the major cities, and we're looking to partner with some eye hospitals...governmental organisations to easily introduce the device to India because in India and most countries where OrCam operates, our biggest challenge is raising awareness of our existence, raising awareness of how we can help people,'' he said. He added that seeing the product in action helps overcome a lot of scepticism in terms of the capability of the device and that the company is ''making inroads in India''. OrCam was founded in 2010 by Amnon Shashua and Ziv Aviram, who are also the founders of auto technology firm Mobileye that was bought by Intel Corp in 2017 for about USD 15 billion. The original OrCam MyEye device was launched in 2015, and the next generation OrCam MyEye 2.0 was launched in 2017. Gil Kroyzer, senior vice president at BrightSource Energy, also spoke of the opportunities the company sees in India. ''India is very interesting in terms of solar...We are looking into additional domains like green hydrogen and some other things that we can do with a high temperature steam,'' he added. Kroyzer said discussions are on with companies in India but declined to disclose details. BrightSource Energy designs, develops and deploys concentrating solar thermal technology to produce high-value steam for electric power, petroleum and industrial-process markets. Headquartered in Oakland, California, BrightSource Energy is a privately held company with operations in the US, China, Europe, Israel and South Africa.

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