Bluesmart CEO talks about crowdfunding a travel startup, company begins shipping to Indiegogo backers

Recently, Diego Saez-Gil, the CEO and the co-founder of Bluesmart spoke out about launching a travel startup through crowdfunding.  The company also collected in pre-orders through crowdfunding platform Indiegogo. 

Bluesmart is behind the world's first smart, connected luggage, declared  it has raised a round of funding of $11.5 million. The sources of the astonishing amount came from a group of institutional investors, including Amadeus IT Group and Cota Capital to Western Technology Investments (WTI) and Y Combinator (YC). The funding is reportedly essential to strengthen its leadership position in the connected travel products market.

The partners of the company also include investors such as Flight VC's Gil Penchina, YC's partner Michael Seibel, MercadoLibre's ($MELI) founder Marcos Galperin, Haystack's Semil Shah and others. This also follows the $2.2 million Bluesmart collected in pre-orders through crowdfunding platform Indiegogo.

Diego Saez-Gil, CEO and co-founder of Bluesmart revealed the idea about starting a travel startup through crowdfunding and the company's partnership with investors at the Skift Global Forum on October 14 and 15 in Brooklyn, New York. He stated, "We are excited to partner with an amazing group of investors who will help us accomplish our mission of empowering travelers and making the world more connected. "

Saez-Gil also added, "With this financial backing, we have the resources to ship great products to our travelers and accelerate our growth. Hardware plus software companies are capital intensive so we are happy to have secured the financing necessary to execute our plans." 

The CEO's declaration also comes as the first smart luggage starts to hit customers' doorsteps. All 15,000 products pre-ordered through Indiegogo, Amazon and Bluemarts own site are expected to arrive to clients  in 110 countries by the end of 2015. As they complete the pre-order, Bluesmart's opening product will be accessible for real-time delivery through Amazon LaunchPad  at Bluesmart.

Meanwhile, the company claimed that  the selected retailer partnerships will be announced soon. Moreover, the proceeds of the investors' collaboration will purportedly be used to enter the market, accelerate production to meet demand, invest in research and development, and finance branding initiatives.