Exoskeleton Startup Cosmos Bionics Strikes a Deal on Shark Tank Egypt

The Egyptian startup medical exoskeleton company Cosmos Bionics was featured in an episode of Shark Tank Egypt, which aired last month. The CEO of Cosmos Bionics, Mina Ashraf Sadek, and his team presented in front of the sharks and then answered their questions for a broadcast segment of 24 minutes in run time. The pitch includes that there are over 2 million people in Egypt alone who suffer from mobility impairment.

The YouTube clip from Shark Tank Egypt (above) is in Arabic, but depending on your geographical region, you may be able to play it with automatically translated close captions. If that fails, you can use the Google Translate app in audio input mode to translate chunks at a time.

In the end, Comsos Bionics accepted an offer from one of the sharks, for 3 M EGP (roughly $100k), in return for a 10% stake in the company.  The investment money is planned to be used primarily for research and to start the certification journey towards ISO 13485 (Certification for Medical Devices), CE mark.

In addition to successfully securing an offer, the Cosmos Bionics presentation introduced lower-body exoskeleton technology to the North African region. The two reposts of the episode on YouTube have over 250,000 combined views alone.

About the Cosmos Exoskeleton:

Cosmos is a lower-body powered hip-knee exoskeleton for walking assistance by the Egyptian startup Cosmos Bionics. It can also be considered a powered limb orthosis dedicated to enabling people with mobility impairments the opportunity to walk independently (while under constant supervision). Similar to many devices of its kind, it requires crutches or other balance aids and good core and upper body strength by its user.