Fleksy, a keyboard app with astonishingly accurate predictive text capabilities for the visually impaired, has closed of a seed funding round worth $900,000, its parent company announced today.
The fresh batch of investment included participation from angel and venture capital investors from the San Francisco Bay Area. Syntellia, the company behind Fleksy, said it will be used not only to try and accelerate the company’s sales, but also build new strategic partnerships and create new resources for cross platform development.
When we looked at Fleksy back in June, our own Brad McCarty described the iOS app as “good old innovation”. It has a simple yet beautiful touch keyboard, with the letters all capped up in white on a black or grey background.
The device then calls out each word and piece of punctuation as you type it, using Apple’s built-in voice over system. When something is incorrect, the user can either swipe left to delete it or down for the app’s next suggestion. Spaces, meanwhile, can be added with a simple swipe to the right, with repeated swipes adding different types of punctuation.
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It’s all very intuitive, and we can see how such a simple concept could really revolutionize smartphone typing for the visually impaired. With the closure of this funding round though, Syntellia will be looking to launch the app on new mobile platforms. Although nothing has been confirmed yet, we wouldn’t be surprised if an Android and Windows Phone version were already in the works.
Kostas Eleftherious, CEO and co-founder of Syntellia said:
“We are now excited to get our technology on as many devices as possible and improve the way people type across all platforms.
We are already working on our first integrations and will soon be reaching out to millions of users.”
The app has already been updated for the iPhone 5, and includes the ability to post directly to Facebook, Twitter and Sina Weibo, alongside its original functionality as a typing tool for SMS and email.
Syntellia’s investor panel includes Thanos Triant, an investor in Seagate and Postini, Edith Yeung, an investor in the Dolphin Browser, John Schappert, the former COO of Zynga, and Fortify.VC, among others.
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