Osmo, the physical iPad add-on with educational games, today announced Apple as a retail partner, adding that the product is now available for purchase. The critical acclaim and USD 12 million in funding allowed Osmo to launch its product at a mass level.

The Series A Round funding was led by investor Accel Partners with other investors including Upfront Ventures and K9 Ventures. As part of the investment, Accel Partners' Rich Wong will join the company's board of directors. Accel Partners has invested in other companies now household names, Supercell, Rovio, Playfish, and SwiftKey, among others.

"Osmo's technology makes childhood education more personal, creative and engaging. We believe that the future of education will rely on intuitive innovation that amplifies learning through interactive online-to-offline experiences - Osmo is at the forefront of this movement," said Rich Wong, partner at Accel Partners. "Osmo is a natural fit for parents and teachers because it adds a small but powerful layer of technology on top of a platform (the iPad) that children already know and love."

According to CEO Pramod Sharma, this is a major progress for the Tangible Play start-up that a year ago was, still "3D printing Osmo in its garage, iterating on jagged prototypes".

Osmo is the iPad app that offers educational games which you can play by manipulating objects in front of the camera of your tablet device. The app makes use of a mirror over the camera to skew gaze down to the action on the table and can instantly detect letters, shapes and in some cases children's drawings.

Sharma described the iterative development of the app, "I have a five year old daughter who loves iPad, but I wanted to extend the iPad experience. We realized that the mirror was required to get the iPad to look at the table."