Omate’s standalone smartwatches

Its flagship product, TrueSmart+ aims to be a smartphone replacement.

Being the owner of what he prides to be the largest Internet of Things (IoT) professional group on LinkedIn with over 23,000 members, French entrepreneur Laurent Le Pen understands the need of tech community for standalone gears like smartwatch. He explains that while other smartwatches need to be connected to the smartphone to become “smart”, the company’s product, Omate TrueSmart can push information by itself as a standalone device connected to the telecom network.

Laurent adds that the product can also be used as a GoPro remote display and can run any Android apps especially sport apps for outdoor activities. Omate TrueSmart, he said, doesn’t need to run with the user’s smartphone tapped on their arm.

World’s first Android smartwatch 

Omate is a tech platform ecosystem for the IoT and wearables allowing fashion and jewelry brands to design their own wearables. This company based in Hong Kong operates a vertically integrated Wearable Design Manufacturer. 32-year old founder and CEO Laurent registered the company on July 1, 2013.

The company’s flagship product, the TrueSmart+, is a smartwatch 2.0 which has been funded through Kickstarter. It became the fifth most funded project of the Design category in September 2013.

“We come from the mobile phone design industry and we reused our legitimacy as mobile engineers to create the world’s first standalone Android smartwatch,” says Laurent.

Laurent is a 500startups alum and has been involved in the Mobile Phone Design industry since 2005. He is also a mentor at Acceleratech, StartupGring and StartupSalad, and Laurent spends his time between Omate facilities in Hong Kong, Shenzhen and Mountain View.

Omate raised over a million USD on Kickstarter two years ago while it was a two-month-old startup. Since then, the company has achieved $7m in revenue and teamed up with numerous distributors worldwide and set up strategic partnerships with the world’s largest jewelry company - Richline Group – a wholly owned Berkshire Hathaway company and French Haute Couture fashion House – Emmanuel Ungaro. The company enters 500startups (Batch 13 – Mountain View California) as part of its investors in the Silicon Valley.