French startup Augment raised $1.5 million to fuel international growth. Three private investors participated in this round — Alain Roubach, Georges Saier and Stanislas Cromback. Augment makes augmented reality useful for salespeople. Whenever you want to show how furniture, merchandising displays or even art prints would look, you can just use your iPad.
You can upload your 3D models to the platform and see them as augmented reality objects in minutes. The iPad acts as a window with your model appearing where you want to put it.
Back in August 2013, the company introduced a freemium model. For $29 a month, you can upload private models — it’s pretty similar to GitHub’s model with private repositories. There are more expensive plans to install Augment on more tablets at the same time.
Today’s round of funding will be used to expand internationally and hire more engineers. For now, Augment’s biggest client is L’Oréal Professional Products. 1,700 salespeople are using the app to sell L’Oréal products.
But already 45 percent of Augment’s revenue comes from the U.S. That’s why the company will open an office in Chicago in the summer of 2014.
Augment was part of French accelerator Le Camping and already raised $300,000 (€220,000) from multiple angels. Now, the company will probably try to sell more subscriptions to create a viable business model.