Wisconsin startup Wearable Technologies Inc. is a finalist in the upcoming South by Southwest pitch competition in Austin, Texas, representing Wisconsin as the only startup in the state to be featured.
Hartland-based Wearable Technologies is developing software and devices designed to predict falls and other accidents for aging adults. It's in the artificial intelligence, voice and robotics technology category and will present on March 11 alongside four other startups in the category that hail from Norway, the state of New York and San Francisco.
SXSW initially reached out to Wearable Technologies and encouraged the startup to apply for the competition, Wearable Technologies founder and CEO Deepak Arora said. It was among 40 finalists selected from a pool of 731 international entries, according to the company.
Wearable Technologies is among a handful of Wisconsin startups that have been featured at the popular arts and technology festival in recent years. In 2019, Milwaukee startup SteamChain was a SXSW Pitch competition finalist in the blockchain category.
Wisconsin will have other representation at this year's SXSW Pitch competition. Greater Madison Chamber of Commerce president Zach Brandon will be the co-emcee of the event and Northwestern Mutual's senior director of technology strategy and transformation Todd Cullen is a member of the 2023 SXSW Pitch advisory board.
Wearable Technologies was founded in 2020 and has patent-pending technology. The startup has five full-time employees, with four in Wisconsin. It recently hired a data engineer from out-of-state and relocated him here, Arora said.
The artificial intelligence that Wearable Technologies is building is designed to prevent accidents among aging adults and other vulnerable populations by predicting dangerous events and providing rapid-response assistance.
Unlike other competitive products on the market, Wearable Technologies will not require users to press a button in order to request assistance, Arora said. The AI, known as Mahi, can learn users' daily routines and alert them if they stray outside their "safe zones," he said.
Wearable Technologies is enrolling customers in its beta phase and will soon begin issuing devices to those users, Arora said. It's also launching a beta version of its app on March 11 that will be available for anyone to download and use without a device, he said.
The SXSW Pitch event has eight categories of pitches: artificial intelligence, voice and robotics; enterprise and smart data; entertainment, media and content; food, nutrition and health; future of work; innovative world technologies; metaverse and Web3; and smart cities, transportation and sustainability.
Wearable Technologies' competition in its category of Artificial Intelligence, Voice and Robotics are:
- Norway's Aiba AS, an AI company predicting cyber grooming, fake profiles and unwanted behavior in digital communities;
- nSight Surgical of San Francisco, which is using machine learning and AI to improve surgical outcomes;
- Helios Life Enterprises of Saratoga Springs, New York, which is developing technology it says can analyze and derive meaning from tonal shifts in speech, specifically in the comments made by executives during earnings calls; and
- Reality Defender of New York, a no-code platform to scan for and detect deepfakes.
