Veejay Lingiah, CEO of FlashSticks, explains why the business should win the Startup of the Year category of the Guardian Small Business Showcase competition:
What if you could point your phone at any object and your phone would not only recognise the object, but instantly translate it into over 40 languages for you? With the FlashSticks App, this is now possible.
FlashSticks didn’t start out with such lofty techie ambitions, in fact, just under two years ago, the company simply launched with sets of pre-printed language Post-it Notes. Since then the start-up, based at the Innovation Birmingham Campus, has been incorporating the latest augmented reality and object recognition technology to perfectly blend ‘old world’ physical technology (such as Post-it Notes) with ‘new world’ digital technology.
The mix seems to be working. Now stocked by leading retailers such as WHSmith and Tesco, the resources are also being used by schools throughout the UK. Dr Neil Hopkin, Headteacher at Peters Hill Primary School says: “FlashSticks are a brilliant new learning tool for educators, there simply isn’t anything else like it on the market. The children just intuitively get it, the simplicity of a Post-it Note and the use of a tablet to bring that note to life. As with all of the new best education products you want something that is so simple that teachers ask ‘why haven’t we always done this?’”
Founders, Veejay Lingiah and Richard Allen, explain “FlashSticks is simply about more engaging and interactive ways to encourage learning. The more engaged we are when we learn, the more that learning sticks.”
All entries which meet the competition criteria are published and our judging panel select a shortlist of the top three for each category. Winners are announced at an awards ceremony in summer 2016.
