A wearable device developed by a 23-year-old Indian based in Kerala has just concluded an overwhelmingly successful campaign on crowd-funding platform Indiegogo. Fin, a tiny hardware product that you can wear on your thumb as a ring and which converts your whole palm into a gesture interface, has raised about $200,000 from some 1,600 people around the world who have pre-ordered the product.
Fin's initial target was to raise $100,000. But in mid-February, when it found its target could be achieved faster than anticipated, it extended the campaign's deadline to March 9, resulting in a doubling of its collections.
This is the second Indian hardware-cum-software startup to have had a great innings on a crowd-funding platform in recent times. Late last year, Gecko, a coin-sized electronic device with a multitude of uses and developed and marketed by a Bangalore startup, raised orders worth $135,485 — more than double the initially targeted $50,000.
Fin has been developed by Rohildev N, who grew up in Malappuram in Kerala and who graduated from Kathir College of Engineering in Coimbatore in 2012.
Eight months ago, he established RHL Vision Technologies at the Startup Village in Kochi to work on touchless technologies, a project he started during his final year of engineering.
Fin, worn as a ring on your thumb, has sensors that can uniquely recognize each segment (phalange) of the fingers. It also has Bluetooth that can be used to link Fin to other devices like your smartphone, TV or another wearable device. So you can assign different functions to each finger segment, and you can perform a function by just making your thumb touch the relevant segment. The possibilities this creates are phenomenal. The simple touch of your thumb on a finger segment can send an emergency alert, silence your phone, move to the next track on your playlist, pick up a call — all without taking the phone out of your pocket or bag. Your fingers can be your numeric keypad.
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