Powered wheelchair producer Freedom One Life is seeking fresh capital in order to take its next-generation Series 5 model to market.
The Glasgow-based business is looking to raise equity funding via crowdfunding platform Crowdcube to supplement backing already received from existing investors Murray Capital, former SSE chief executive Ian Marchant and Seric founder Stuart Macdonald.
Innovate UK has also contributed more than £250,000 of grant funding.
The Series 5 is the result of years of research and development, with thousands of hours of testing across more than 20,000 km in real-world conditions.
It has a 40km real-world range, a compact on-board charger and is compact enough to get into the narrowest of spaces on public transport - with an integrated flight mode to make air travel easier.
Alex Papanikolaou, the founder of Freedom One Life, has cerebral palsy and uses a powered wheelchair on a daily basis. He was frustrated by previous models constantly breaking down and being stranded by unreliable powerchairs, so decided to address the problem himself and started the business in 2013.
Papanikolaou said: “Powered wheelchairs exist to liberate and empower people like me, yet most powerchair users have their life choices restricted by limited range, breakdowns and fear of being stranded.
“In creating the Series 5, we have designed a powerchair that combines lived experience with industry leading design - test drives in our powerchair leave huge smiles on users faces.
“This fundraise will allow us to take the Series 5 to full commercial launch, including the manufacture of demo chairs for the well-established distributor market across the UK and Europe, as we seek to become a leader in a market that is expected to more than double in value to £9.24bn globally by 2027.”
In addition to Papanikolaou, who serves as technical director, Albert Nicholl is the company's managing director and Scott Savage is lead design engineer.
Freedom One Life received more than £400,000 of non-dilutive funding from Scottish Enterprise, Scottish EDGE, the Prince’s Trust and the Stelios Award for Disabled Entrepreneurs in the UK.
This has since been followed by three funding rounds totalling more than £1.2m.
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