The team of Romanians who launched the smartwatch project Vector Watch last year has made ‘spectacular’ progress and stands chances of being successful worldwide as the ‘smart’ wearable market surges in the coming years.
“There was no Vector Watch nine months ago, but this is a company that is moving extremely fast and has done a lot of spectacular things silently,” Radu Georgescu told ZF. “It’s a company worth keeping an eye on, business, product and investment-wise.”
Radu Georgescu is one of the most powerful local IT entrepreneurs and he invested EUR0.5 million in the project last year.
Vector Watch’s attempt to work its way onto a market where its rivals are not only Apple, Motorola and Samsung but also smaller players, comes at a time of ‘formidable’ growth of the Romanian IT industry, Georgescu says. “Ten years ago I couldn’t find two entrepreneurs for the innovation incubator I had set up. I closed the project at some point. Now this kind of incubators is thriving, they are packed. I find it extraordinary. People realized they have the chance to do more as entrepreneurs.”
Gecad’s founder is like a spearhead of the industry but tens or hundreds of ‘Radu Georgescus’ are now emerging in Romania.
Vector Watch will unveil the smartwatch it has worked on during these past few months in a private event in Basel, Switzerland, on Thursday Andrei Pitis, founder and technical director of Vector Watch, told ZF without providing further details.
The company, whose shareholders also include Romanians Dan Tudose and Irina Alexandru, recruited Joe Santana, former chief executive officer and chairman of watch manufacturer Timex to be its general manager. Vector also hired Steve Jarvis, former senior designer for Nike, where he developed various wearable smart accessories, to help with the development of its smartwatch.
Radu Georgescu would not provide details about the company’s plans, either, saying the stakes are too high.
“The company has the opportunity to become much too big for us to afford to be hasty with announcements.”
Besides the data in the various international reports, which point to significant growth on the smart accessories market year by year, Vector Watch team estimates, as the Gecad founder does for that matter, that sales will be even higher. “It’s inevitable that the Internet of things will become a reality.”
Radu Georgescu is the entrepreneur that put Romania on the global technology industry map in 2003 when he sold an antivirus technology to Microsoft. Since then, he has successfully exited a number of companies built from scratch, like payment processor GeCad ePayment, sold to Naspers group, or the electronic software distribution solution provider Avangate, acquired by US private equity firm Francisco Partners.
(English version by Loredana Fratila-Cristescu)