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Initiative Q Founder Launches Mosquito Tracking Startup

Initiative Q Founder Launches Mosquito Tracking Startup

Saar Wilf’s Bzigo develops a device that monitors a room using an infrared camera and marks the mosquito’s exact location with a red laser once it lands

Hagar Ravet | 16:58, 02.06.19
Initiative Q Ltd. founder Saar Wilf has unveiled his new startup, Bzigo Inc., which develops a device that uses lasers to track and mark mosquitos within a room to help disgruntled humans kill them.

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Wilf co-founded Bzigo with CEO Nadav Benedek in 2016 and also funded its seed round. The Tel Aviv-based startup’s device monitors a room using an infrared camera and marks the mosquito’s exact location with a red laser once it lands.

Saar Wilf. Photo: Orel Cohen Saar Wilf. Photo: Orel Cohen Saar Wilf. Photo: Orel Cohen

To address potential privacy issues, the device only monitors the upper areas of the room, avoiding any sensitive areas, Benedek said in a phone interview with Calcalist Sunday. The device does not save any footage, nor does it store footage online, he added. The device’s Wi-Fi capabilities are used to send users mobile alerts through a dedicated app when a mosquito is detected, but can also be shut off to use the device offline.

A mosquito is just one or two pixels in a photo taken from afar, so the device has to monitor movement in real time to identify patterns characteristic of mosquitos and specific wavelengths, Benedek explained.

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Bzigo’s product is currently at its prototype stage and is expected to hit the market in about 18 months, following the company’s next funding round, meant to finance the establishment of a manufacturing line. The company currently employs three people.

Last year, Wilf, a serial entrepreneur and investor, founded controversial digital payment venture Initiative Q, based on a digital coin called Q. To get to a critical mass of users before tackling the full development of the infrastructure, Initiative Q incentivized people to pre-register with name and email in exchange for a diminishing allocation of coins, attracting some 7 million pre-registered users according to Wilf. In March, Initiative Q launched a mobile app.
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