Cinemood secures $2.5M for its mini-projector with kid-friendly content built in

While creating content for kids on tablets has been largely the preserve of smash games like Clash of Clans, there is more than one way to skin a cat, and another way may be to wrap it in hardware. That’s the thinking behind the Cinemood, an appealing, portable mini-cinema projector which comes bundled with content, and number of other features, for young kids. It’s now raised $2.5 million in a Series A round from the Europe-based IIFD fund to take it to the next phase.

The funding comes after Cinemood ran a successful crowdfunding campaign on Indiegogo, raising $150,000 and shipping product for backers on-time, last December. It also went through the Bang&Olufsen acceleration program in 2015 during the product development.

The Cinemood features a set of set of silicon covers shaped like cartoon characters that contain NFC-tags. These then trigger content downloads to the device itself. It comes pre-loaded with +150 hours of multilingual content including licensed cartoons, digital books, lullabies, audio stories, shadow puppet show tutorials, and educational lessons. Additional content can be downloaded just by putting another silicon cover on it and it doesn’t carry any advertising.

Cofounder and CEO Mike Bukhovtsev reckon this makes it more appealing to young viewers given that the simple user interface, small size and the walled-garden platform ensures that only age-appropriate content is projected.