A Siberian company that participated in last year’s Startup Tour has reportedly raised investment of $1.4 million to produce the first batch of 3D pens known as CreoPop.
CreoPop. Photo: Company website.
The pens use a new type of ink that hardens on exposure to light, allowing the user to draw 3D structures in mid-air. The product is aimed at everyone from artists to designers - and even kids looking to take their creativity beyond the 2D plain.
CreoPop may never have gotten to the stage of raising investment without early help from Skolkovo experts on the Startup Tour, which visited the Siberian city of Tomsk in 2014.
“Participating in Skolkovo events really helps us to understand better potential users of CreoPop, and to take advice from experienced investors,” said Dmitriy Starodubtsev, the chairman of the board at DI-Group, which owns CreoPop.
The news that DI-Group, whose founders hail from Russia and Singapore, had raised 2 million Singapore dollars in investment for CreoPop was first broken by Siberian website Inotomsk.ru.
The company wants to start selling 3D pens through American network BestBuy by the end of August this year. It will sell for $129 for a kit consisting of a pen and three ink cartridges. CreoPop has several inks packages in various colors, shapes, painting surface and even smell, at extra cost. The company also plans to produce inks whose color reacts to temperature changes and conduct electricity.
Today, DI-Group is an official partner of the Skolkovo Foundation. Last month, the Skolkovo Foundation signed a cooperation agreement with Singapore accelerator HaxAsia and DI-Group microfund Hardware 2.0.
Vasily Ryzhonkov, head of Skolkovo’s newly formed Mobile Tech Hub, called DI-Group “a good example of how to launch a high-tech business in modern Russia.”
The success of the company in raising the money, Ryzhonkov added, “testifies to the need for supplying competitive consumable products to the world market through the Singapore window.”
“Not many companies in Russia can display this skill set,” he said. “In the relatively short history of the company, the founders have managed to create a good professional team in the IT industry.”
Skolkovo PR and Communications Department assistant Kyuder Tsedenov contributed to this article.