Europe's largest crowdfunding project "drone paparazzi" failed, collecting $ 3.6 million

Last November, the Torquing Group launched a crowdfunding campaign . The company is developing a drone ZANO. The Torquing Group came to Kickstarter to raise $ 195,000 in 30 days. But a day later, the project gained support for 3,696 backers, collecting a total of more than $ 1.02 million.

Drone ZANO is positioned by the British startup as its “personal paparazzi”. Ideal for selfies. By controlling his flight using gestures from your smartphone or tablet, you can take everything on the camera into his field of view.

Source: crowdpublishing.ru
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However, as it turned out, he was not destined to "fly up." To date, the project has collected about $ 3.6 million. The crowdfunding campaign ZANO was the largest on the European Kickstarter site.

Drone did not meet the commercial expectations of its creators.

According to them, out of 15,363 drones (not counting 12,000 devices for backers), only about 600 copies were sold. The quality of the devices leaves much to be desired: the drone has poor image quality, a weak battery, the lack of the stated autonomy maintenance functions and the commands “follow me”, “hold position”.

Frustrated backers began to complain on their Facebook and Twitter pages . They call the project "divorce", and the company's employees - "scammers." Many have already managed to pay pre-order and now demand their money back. On Kickstarter, the gadget was sold at a special price - from $ 220. The first ZANO devices should have been received by the owners in June 2015, but this deadline the company violated and delayed the issue of devices for an indefinite period. In the autumn, about 600 drones were sent to the sponsors of the crowdfunding campaign, but their functions were far from promised: the device could barely fly.

One of the angry "investors" even made a parody video for the edification of those who make decisions about investing in a project based on a video presentation. However, the administration of Kickstarter often reminds that backers are not buyers, but act as investors of the project and should be ready to say goodbye to investments in case of failure, writes The Verge.

Torquing Group has been producing air drones since 2008. Initially, the company released them for military purposes, having achieved technical characteristics that met the high demands of defense orders; now it was the turn to conquer the consumer market. For this purpose, the ZANO model was developed.

This is not the first failure of the project on Kickstarter. In October, the crowdfunding platform closed a project to raise funds for the creation of a laser razor Skarp . The reason is the lack of a full-fledged working prototype of the device. More than 20 thousand investors have invested about $ 4 million in the project.