February 1 (SeeNews) - Romanian startup Axosuits plans to launch sales of medical exoskeletons for people with walking disabilities by the middle of 2017, the company's CEO Andras Kapy told SeeNews.
An exoskeleton is a wearable electromechanical device with multiple practical applications, the most common of which is allowing people with physical disabilities to move their limbs.
The company, however, should first obtain market certification - a process expected to take another couple of months, Kapy told SeeNews in a recent interview over the phone, adding that this would allow the company to sell its products anywhere in the EU.
Next, Axosuits plans to expand its five-member team and hopefully produce its first batch of exoskeletons by the beginning of the summer.
"We are waiting for certification in order to start production of the first 20 units because if anything changes we would have to start from scratch. We are hoping to start production in May or June," Kapy said.
Axosuits' first clients will be state-owned and foreign hospitals and medical recovery centres.
The final price of a unit would stand at 20,000 - 25,000 euro ($21,400 - 26,700).
Axosuits is also considering developing alternative uses of its products.
Products for industrial use are much cheaper to develop, Kapy commented. He, however, would not say if Axosuits is contemplating options to develop defence products.
Exoskeletons have been used by the military since the 1960s to boost soldiers' strength and endurance.
Unlike exoskeleton manufacturers in the U.S. or Japan, whose research is mainly publicly funded, Axosuits has to keep its budget tight, the official also said.
To cap production costs, Axosuits integrates existing components on the local and foreign markets with its own technology, using local subcontractors for assembly.
"We have our own engineers and we make the prototypes from zero. Coming to the third generation, we started using subcontractors' services, in order to simulate a real production scenario," Kapy said. "We want the final assembly phase of the suits to be done locally, in Oradea," he added.
Based in Oradea city in western Romania, Axosuits was founded three years ago by Kapy and Dorin Hirte, the company's current CTO, whom Kapy met thanks to a local business angel - Adrian Gheara. Gheara was also the first to invest in Axosuits.
"We initially covered costs with our own funds, then we started to attract money from business angels and investors. To get to this point we spent some 200,000 euro," Andras said.
The company is currently in the middle of a series A financing round and aims to raise up to 500,000 euro for team expansion, the production of the first batch of costumes and the approval costs.
"We are proud to be one of the few startups that could raise money in Romania. When they get to the stage when they can raise money, most startups leave the country."
For his part, Kapy said he hopes to make an exit in five years' time and sell Axosuits to a medtech giant with access to a global market.
"We aim to become an excellence centre in the field of exoskeletons," he said, adding that this is an area with a vast growth potential which is largely undervalued.
The entrepreneur pointed to red tape and reluctance on the part of financial institutions to embrace fresh ideas as some of the stumbling blocks on the local startup scene. He, however, commented that certain steps have been taken to back up the business, such as the adoption of the business angels law in June 2015. The law grants tax breaks to individuals who invest between 3,000 and 200,000 euro in micro and small enterprises.
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