COLUMBUS, Ohio — Personal safety and emergency management startup Cell 411 has kicked off an angel investment round totaling $2.5 million, which will allow for the expansion of its platform, the release of its Control Room commercial offering, and the expansion of the Cell 411 app in non-English speaking countries.

Cell 411 is an emergency management and micro-social platform and mobile app which allows its users to send and respond to emergency alerts in real time. The platform employs completely customizable and dynamic management of groups of trusted individuals, which in essence allows for the crowd-sourcing of emergencies between friends, family members and entire communities.

The app allows users to live-stream video, create neighborhood-watch groups and organize themselves into decentralized units which allow for easy policing and response to community needs, whatever they may be.

Led by the non-profit Insight Network (a Swiss Verein), this funding round will provide a substantial boost to development and growth efforts, especially in countries like South Africa, where the platform has become extremely popular. This angel investment round started only a few months after Cell 411 accepted an initial investment of $200,000 from crypto-currency entrepreneur Marc DeMesel.

While the standard mobile app is free to all users, the company’s Control Room platform will be aimed at commercial clients such as universities, insurance companies, security firms, lone-workers and other potential clients requiring real-time response to their clients’ requests for help. The Control Room offering will be released to the public later this summer.

As you can imagine, we are very excited about the growth Cell 411 is experiencing. We have been working extremely hard to improve our platform, deliver on users’ demands and create a solution that is helping people all over the world on a daily basis,” said founder Virgil Vaduva.  “Control Room is just the latest example of us responding to a huge market demand that has not been addressed by anyone else in this industry.  We are literally changing the way in which the world thinks about addressing emergencies. Our platform can literally save lives, and we are taking this job very seriously.”

Cell 411 has also just completed a full redesign of the mobile app, including improvements to the user interface, implementation of high definition (including 4K) video streaming, and localized, multi-language support for the app. The new version will be released in July, as soon as testing is completed.

Vaduva said, “We have some very exciting expansion plans, and this investment round is just the beginning of what we believe to be a revolution in the personal safety and security industry.  We are bringing what was once a privilege for the few to the masses, and we are just getting started.”

To learn more about Cell 411, you can visit http://getcell411.com