Richmond Hill’s CrowdCare Raises $1 Million Round to Launch Mobile App, Wysdom

January 29, 2014

CrowdCare has raised $1 million.

The round, which brings the Canadian company’s total funding to $3 million, was led by Mantella Venture partners.

The capital injection will allow the startup, based in Richmond Hill, Ontario, to accelerate development of Wysdom, an Android app currently in beta that claims to be the world’s first codified knowledge base to deliver answers to questions subscribers have about their smartphones.

“Seeking simple answers to questions about your smartphone is now easier than ever before,” explains Ian Collins, the CEO of CrowdCare. “We’re working with mobile operators around the world to launch a white labelled version of the CrowdCare service so their subscribers have somewhere to get quick, accurate answers, anytime, any place.”

According to the company, 22% of people in the world now own a smartphone and they are generating billions of questions each year. Most subscribers end up searching online and wading through endless forums filled with inaccurate information, says CrowdCare, and approximately 10% of questions end up in service provider call centres where most tech support reps “have been trained to divert callers to other sources for all but the most core service questions.” Wysdom aims to fill that void by providing real-time answers to customers’ questions from their device.

“Today, smartphones are not only used by tech savvy early adopters,” notes Jeff Brunet, president of CrowdCare. “A solution like CrowdCare is absolutely critical to avoid massive confusion. When you take your car to the mechanic they don’t ask you to help diagnose the problem and give them a hand changing your oil—it shouldn’t be any different for smartphones.”

Wysdom is free for a limited time in the Google Play Store. An iOS version will be available “soon.”

Part of the York Region in Greater Toronto, Richmond Hill and its fellow municipalities including Markham and Vaughan are home to nearly 4,000 information and communications technology companies, which makes the area Canada’s highest ICT industry concentration and a major enterprise solutions technology cluster as well.