VOL 07 I ISSUE 06 I 2021
PARACOSMA
Embracing Virtual Reality to Create More Beautiful Reality Problem-solving Technology The World is Interesting With AR/VR
World's Top 05 AR/VR Solution Providers, 2021
Editor’s Desk Innovating Business Models and Facilitating Productive Virtual Platform with AR/VR
T
here’s no doubt in how technology plays the most vital role in the lives of everyone. The value it brings in various industries is absolutely praiseworthy. Technologies like Augmented Reality (AR) and Virtual Reality (VR) have been proven to be valuable in making their mark in shaping the different industries. These technologies make a significant difference by transforming various sectors like education, banking, businesses, etc. The recent developments in AR and VR technologies are game-changing, especially in the education sector. By superimposing an image generated by a computer on a user’s view of the real world, AR technology provides a composite image view. In comparison, VR technology provides a virtual environment that is experienced through inputs provided by a computer. These technologies make study more interesting, as they provide students with realworld experience in their learning. With such technologies studying is no mundane or boring for students. AR/VR Technology is a blessing for the education sector and should be used diligently to facilitate effective learning with quality digital content.
The human brain easily remembers the visuals it sees, and therefore, these technologies are more helpful to students. These technologies also allow students to learn at their own pace and wherever they want and whatever time they want by using the internet platform. With AR/VR technologies, it is possible to make virtual realities better than the actual reality, and thus, students can enjoy the learning. These technologies can benefit them to thrive academically, personally, and professionally, making education more lively and a great learning experience for students.
The advantages AR/VR technologies offer are enormous. Constant advancements in them are bringing change to the digital and technological landscape. These technologies are becoming new drivers for businesses and companies in creative fields to innovate their business models. They are also helping businesses in knowing the changes that are happening in the industry and help them make smarter and high-value decisions. AR/VR technology makes it possible to go beyond all the experiences one could have in real life today. With AR/VR technology, it is possible to create AR/VR objects, scenes, and experiences indistinguishable from real life. It is also possible to create experiences that have happened in the past or that could possibly be occurred in the future by anticipating the events and using forces of creative imagination. Pandemic has accelerated the shift from inperson activities to remote, virtual activities. And with AR/VR technologies, it is possible to experience the realworld scenario virtually. These technologies facilitate enjoyable and productive virtual platforms and benefit businesses, students, and many sectors, in unconventional ways. In this edition of ‘World’s Top 05 AR/VR Solution Providers, 2021’, we have enlisted companies that are helping businesses experience better virtual reality, innovate their business models, and facilitate a great learning platform for students. Let’s have a look at the contribution of these AR/VR solution providers in various sectors!
Sharad Chitalkar
sharad@insightssuccess.com
CONtents COVER STORY
08
PARACOSMA INC Embracing Virtual Reality to Create More Beautiful Reality
Article
CXO 24
16
Problem-solving Technology The World is Interesting With AR/VR
18
Leader's Viewpoint How the Trust Criteria are Set by the Software Review Platforms?
28
CleverBooks
Snaappy
An Incredible Way to Make Study Come Alive
Making Visual Communication More Approachable
Editor-in-Chief Hitesh Dhamani Managing Editor Anish Miller
Executive Editor Sharad Chitalkar
Visualizer
Art & Design Director
David King
Asha Bange
Assistant Editors Jenny Fernandes Sourabh More
Associate Designer Shubham Dali
Co-designer Kartik Balapurkar
Senior Sales Manager
Business Development Manager
Kshitij S
Rick Harris
Marketing Manager
Sales Executives
John Matthew
David, Martin, Irfan
Technical Head
Business Development Executives
Jacob Smile
Steve, Joe, Aidan, Binay
Technical Specialist Aditya
Digital Marketing Manager Marry D'Souza
SME-SMO Executive Amol Wadekar
Research Analyst Frank Adams
Database Management Stella Andrew
Circulation Manager Robert Brown
Technology Consultant David Stokes
sales@insightssuccess.com July, 2021
Follow us on :
www.facebook.com/insightssuccess/
www.twitter.com/insightssuccess
We are also available on : Copyright © 2021 Insights Success, All rights reserved. The content and images used in this magazine should not be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior permission from Insights Success. Reprint rights remain solely with Insights Success.
World's Top
AR/VR Solution Providers
2021
Company Name
Featured Person
Brief
BITSENS bitsens.com
Edis Galvonas CEO
BITSENS is a creative digital agency with a large team of professionals ready to meet your needs and develop your ideas.
CleverBooks cleverbooks.eu
Darya Yegorina Founder
CleverBooks provides STEM-oriented global curriculum-based teaching and learning solutions for primary education.
East City Films eastcityfilms.com
Ashley Cowan Co-founder and CEO
East City Films is a production company, making TV, film and digital content for broadcasters and brands including Channel 4, MTV, Columbia Records, River Island, Honda, Smirnoff and Sony.
Paracosma Paracosma.com
Ken Ehrhart Founder & CEO
Paracosma Inc is Augmented and Virtual Reality design, consulting and systems integration company that provides solutions and skills to both small and large customers.
Snaappy snaappy.com
Gal Shvebish Co-founder & CEO
Snaappy is the most emotional Augmented Reality app in the world.
Ken Ehrhart, Founder & CEO, Paracosma Inc
COVER STORY
PARACOSMA INC Embracing Virtual Reality to Create More Beautiful Reality
Paracosma offers custom Augmented and Virtual Reality Application Development and 3D Content Creation.
T
he constant advancements in emerging technologies are bringing change to the digital and technological landscape. Technologies such as augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR) are becoming new drivers for businesses and companies which are in creative fields utilizing AR/VR technologies to innovate their business models. These technologies are also helping businesses in recognizing the changes that are taking place in the industry and will assist them to make smarter and more creative decisions. Paracosma is an Augmented and Virtual Reality Solutions Provider. It offers custom AR and VR Application Development and 3D Content Creation Services, including photorealistic models, Digital Twins and 360 video production and distribution services. The company was founded at the start of 2016, just when VR headsets became commercially available from Oculus and HTC. The next year, Apple and Google launched their AR platforms. Since then, it has continually expanded capabilities around all aspects of 3D computing, as it came to understand there is a broader transition from 2D to 3D computing that extends well beyond VR and AR. “We have been very fortunate to surf the wave ahead of AR/VR adoption,” says Ken Ehrhart, Founder & CEO of Paracosma. Below are the highlights of the interview conducted between Insights Success and Ken Ehrhart: Take our readers through your journey being at the helm of Paracosma. Each year since our founding, we have grown dramatically. We have outpacing the broader AR/VR Markets, effectively growing our market share. We now have 75 employees across our US headquarters, Japan sales and technology office, and Nepal development center. Even last year, during the worst of the pandemic, we celebrated record high revenues each quarter and for the year overall. After implementing a policy to not layoff any employees during the lockdowns, we even increased our headcount over the course of last year. Kindly elaborate the company’s vision “to make Virtual Realities better than Reality”. As we consider the goals and potential for AR and VR, the most basic goal is to make Augmented and Virtual Reality as Good as Reality. The basic goal is to create AR/VR objects and scenes and experiences that are indistinguishable from real life. Yet, that does not bring the greatest benefit. The greatest benefit of AR/VR is in creating Virtual Worlds that are better than Reality. In this case, better might mean too expensive, impractical, dangerous, unethical, rare, or even impossible in real life. A good example is our VR surgery training. It is unethical to
Our VISION is to make VIRTUAL REALITIES better than REALITY.
practice surgery on patients who do not need the surgery. However, we can practice surgery on virtual patients to improve real-world outcomes. Similarly, for industrial training we can recreate dangerous scenarios and train how to respond to those scenarios without creating real world fires, toxic spills, or explosions. We can also bring students to space or let them walk through an active volcano. In Nepal, we began capturing 360 video and creating VR models of Buddha’s birthplace and Hindu temples. But we quickly realized that in addition to showing remote visitors what these places look like today we can take VR users back to visit at the time of Buddha’s birth. This means that the opportunities for AR/VR experiences go beyond all the experiences you could possibly have in real life today, to all experiences that have happened in the past, or that could possibly be imagined. Please list the popular AR/VR solutions that make your company standout from the competition. One of our biggest clients is replacing studio photography with rendered images of scenes of photorealistic 3D models that our artists create by hand. These models are too complex to even be viewed in AR or VR. But they provide an example of the broader transition from 2D to 3D computing. We have also begun capturing synthetic images of environments and scenarios we create in virtual worlds inside simulation engines. These images are produced by the tens of thousands to be used as training data for machine-vision AI systems. Creating virtual worlds is really a core specialty of ours. With the pandemic, a growing part of our business is producing virtual events and virtual worlds for entertainment and business. We produced The Tokushima Movie Festival, a 3-day, 3-venue film festival in Japan, where we streamed films, seminars and an esports competition into VR. We have created virtual offices, including our own, for meetings; auditoriums for company meetings; also, conferences, receptions, afterparties, and
more. This is one of our fastest growing businesses. For training, in addition to VR surgery, we just entered the 4th year of working with one of the world’s largest HR and talent management companies. For their executive training events, we created a “Leader Library” in AR and VR as well as mobile and website apps, used to access over two hours of video holograms of 18 company leaders intimately discussing company culture, resolving challenges, reflecting on achievements. For AARP, we have created in VR more than 60 brain training games, as well as board games and other experiences. What are the factors that affect the availability of Virtual Reality (VR) technology to the audience? And how can the gap between the audience and the VR Technology be reduced? With the release of Oculus’ Quest 2 VR headset in the second half of 2020, we saw a real breakthrough, in terms of price, ease of use, comfort, performance and content. The Quest 2 was a big holiday hit and did not suffer from the supply chain issues we saw at the outset of the pandemic. This will be a breakthrough device for business users as well. For a small fraction of the cost of sending an employee to a tradeshow, conference or company offsite meeting, companies can send employees a VR headset that allows them to easily join company and industry events remotely and safely from home. Remote collaboration in VR and AR is poised to become a third option alongside teleconferencing and an eventual return to in-person offices. How can AR/VR enhance Design, Production, and Training? AR/VR allow you to experience 3D objects and 3D worlds in the same way we experience the real world. They allow you to easily view and understand information that might be hard to relate to on a piece of paper or 2D monitor. For example, one of our clients displays IoT (Internet of Things) data from throughout their customers’ facilities on 3D Digital Twin models of those facilities. Users see alerts and sensor data on the storage tank or machine triggering the alert. Similarly, one of our manufacturing clients, is replacing clipboards of paper checklists, with an AR application that can guide an engineer around a complex machine, guiding them with way-finder arrows and highlights, to inspection points or maintenance tasks. The user can photograph issues to send to the safety or maintenance head, or instantly start a 2-way video conference for support. This is really the adoption of what is known as Industry 4.0 or the fourth industrial revolution, facilitated by AR/VR. According to you, which industries will be disrupted by AR/VR technology in the future?
I cannot image an industry which will not be disrupted by AR/VR technology. In many cases this is being accelerated by the pandemic. We have seen a huge shift from in-person activities to remote, virtual activities. As most workers and companies applaud the benefits of this new normal, we have seen an out-migration from city centers to suburbs, midsized cities and even across the country. Headquarter campuses have been sold, offices stand vacant. We have seen real estate patterns change. Catering, lunch-dining, dry cleaning, commuting, all have seen huge impacts. The entire business travel, tradeshow and conference industries have been completely altered. Just as adopting “casual Friday” impacted the clothing industry, how we dress is changing, at least from the waist down. Most of these are pandemic driven changes, but if you consider that VR will facilitate more effective, productive, realistic, immersive, and enjoyable alternatives to in-person meetings, then VR will facilitate and extend all these changes. Can Virtual Reality be a Substitute for Real Life Experiences? Yes. Many people will be able to experience things in VR that they would never have the chance to experience in real life. Others will try something for the first time virtually that they will then seek out in real life. Even with real life experiences, not everyone participates to the same degree. Some go to climb the rock walls in Yosemite, others to watch the climbers. Similarly, some people enjoy going to concerts or sporting events, while others enjoy concert videos or highlight reels. As VR improves, it will increasingly offer a middle ground between current media representations of real life and actual real-life experiences. Eventually, it will offer experiences beyond what is possible in real life. That is what we can already provide with VR training. We can provide training experiences in a repeatable, safe, way that would otherwise be impossible in real life. What have you envisioned for your company’s future, in terms of expansion, introduction of new services, and talent acquisition? To date, Paracosma has often played an invisible role behind the scenes. We are developing custom applications, new technologies and innovations, as well as 3D content, that then become part of our client’s products. Similarly, much of our sales are through channel partners, not direct. Increasingly we are bundling our accumulated expertise into “off the shelf” products and services. This will make our capabilities more accessible, more scalable and lower cost. We are building out our US executive team, for marketing, sales, business development, and partnering. And, we have accelerated hiring of talent to expand our teams.
& & 20 The
Most
SUCCESSFUL
BUSINESSWOMEN to Watch, 2020
kimberly Khoury
Paving her Way in Sustainability Development
Problem-solving Technology
The World is Interesting With AR/VR 16 | July 2021
www.insightssuccess.com
A
few years ago, who would have thought that we can get to experience a virtual world of education, research, gaming, social media, movies, and various other fields. Many of us imagine traveling our favorite places and experience things that would be, of course, a dream in real life. Things like walking in space, traveling freely anywhere, anytime, and many things to many people. It is all possible today because of AR/VR technology. Creating a virtual reality world, AR/VR seeks to offer such experience beyond the possibilities in real life. The introduction of AR/VR tools has brought everything at one place by connecting us to the virtual world. The Curios Beginning The journey of AR/VR started when people gradually thought that they could build technology capable of giving the same experience as the real world. Gradually the technology improved, and within few years, the AR/VR landscape entered entertainment, gaming, and even social landscapes. But how serious do we need to get about AR/VR by investing our resources into these advanced technologies is required to be answered. Well then, let’s look at some of the points below, which can head us in the right direction. The Cost-Factor If we analyze the AR/VR industry, we find that companies are not very much inclined towards adopting these into their business processes. It is because users might find the technology attractive initially, but customers do not consider rebuying the products, mainly because of the costs. But except for this, the benefits AR/VR brings are enormous.
technology like AR that makes their products more efficient. AR is making a big difference in the industry as it holds the power to personalize the visuals for us. The main challenge will be to focus entirely on integrating and making it resourceful for the people. Reduce Time and Stress The way content is delivered today, a personalized touch through seeing, doing, using imagination to assess and judge the right product, saves a lot of time for you. It allows you to understand the unknown and the complex world, which might be hard to relate in reality. Like trying different frames and finding the perfect fit for you right from your mobile screens. Even in the medical field, students can use it for virtual surgeries as a part of their surgical training. It can also be used for training the industry workers by recreating scenarios that show the exact working of different machines and systems. For students and people interested in space, AR/VR can walk them through the virtual world of space, having the best experience. Appreciate the Experience it Brings The effective growth of AR/VR in the market shows the impact it has had on the industry. The simple goal is to create an environment for the users to experience the thrill similar to real life. And, there are cases where things may not be possible to experience even in reality, and we must appreciate that AR makes that possible for us. This only means that the opportunities AR/VR brings into the market could go beyond all our expectations in real life. Additionally, with the pandemic affecting the business, it seems fair to utilize the best virtual world with virtual offices, meetings, conferences, and more. The Future Possibility
Realizing the Benefits AR/VR builds a robust ICT infrastructure for schools and students with updated teaching methods. Looking at the current necessity of the educational sector, students need to be taught with new and advanced learning methods and technologies like AR/VR. Since we are already in the digital revolution, by using AR/VR standards in education, the future of the academic world looks promising. The world around us is full of innovation, and industries today want to align their offerings with advanced www.insightssuccess.com
AR/VR has become a significant breakthrough and one of the fastest-growing businesses today, allowing us to experience the best of the 3D world. There is no industry where AR/VR has not been disrupted, as we have seen a huge shift of industries into appreciating its benefits. We can say it is costly, but the role AR/VR plays in the business is crucial. AR/VR applications, new technologies, and innovations have become a part of our lives now. The future will be more accessible with AR/VR by making everything possible and expanding the business significantly.
July 2021
| 17
Dr.Darya Yegorina Founder CleverBooks
18 | July 2021
www.insightssuccess.com
World's Top 05 AR/VR Solution Providers, 2021
CleverBooks An Incredible Way to Make Study Come Alive
I
n the era of rapid digital advancement, schools are now struggling to maintain relevancy in their classes. Thanks to the rapid changes in the job market. Schools are obliged to innovate in order to sustain their development by building a strong ICT infrastructure to accommodate 21st-century learning demands for students. However, it is not enough to simply add technology to existing teaching methods. Technology must be used strategically to benefit students with quality digital content with strong academic relevance in order to provide effective learning. Thanks to the smart way of CleverBooks STEM subjects, which help to develop 21st-century skills and to teach kids how to think instead of what to think. An interview between Insights Success and Dr. Darya Yegorina, the Founder of CleverBooks, bridges the gap between digital natives and digital immigrants.
Describe your company and its cutting-edge VR/AR services which address all the needs of your customers. CleverBooks provides STEM-oriented global curriculumbased teaching and learning solutions for primary education. Empowering Kids Learning in the acquisition of necessary for the 21st Century skills by utilizing the most innovative AR technology tools is our main goal. In 2020, CleverBooks had focus on developing a one stop digital ecosystem to serve the needs of digital education of tomorrow with Augmented Reality and Artificial intelligence. Augmented Classroom (www.augmentedclassroom.com) is a comprehensive SaaS solution that helps schools around the world to teach and learn in class and remotely. The platform supports STEM curriculum with Augmented Reality and provides opportunities for implementing new pedagogical practices of collaborative learning via cutting edge technology.
Below are the highlights of the interview: What led to the inception of the CleverBooks? CleverBooks was created by Dr. Darya Yegorina and Dr. Inna Armstrong. Both founders are moms, and they have noticed that their kids were not happy with the teaching & learning at schools because of the lack of technology. How can a kid be excited about learning if the school keeps on teaching the same way as it was 20, 30 years ago? Kids need to adapt to the technological world and have innovative solutions at the primary stage to boost their creativity and develop digital skills for future jobs. At this moment, CleverBooks was born, to serve the gap between digital natives and digital immigrants. Additionally, it is very important to invest in the education quality at the early stage. The students at the desks today will be leading the society of the future.
www.insightssuccess.com
Could you throw some light on your mission and vision statement? CleverBooks’ Mission CleverBooks delivers the most innovative educative products based on Augmented Reality technology and traditional education aids for kids around the world. We strive to empower a new generation of progressive and creative children by delivering the most innovative solutions at the most affordable prices because everyone has the right to access technology for efficient and progressive education. By doing this, we drive the digital revolution in every classroom around the world. We are defining standards for using Augmented Reality in the education sector and the future of education.
July 2021
| 19
CleverBooks’ Vision We believe that we are in this world to make great products with a focus on innovation. We believe that our solutions are here to change the way kids are educated today. The solutions should be simple and not complicated. We say no to the application of Augmented Reality to hundreds of industries because we believe that all the products we make are to have one single purpose – to change the education landscape. This is truly important and meaningful for us. We strive for excellence and high quality because kids deserve to have the best. These values are embedded in every single product we make and come from our hearts. How are your AR/VR services unique from the other companies’ offerings? CleverBooks sets the standards in Augmented Reality to help kids improve test-score by up to 33% and increases retention rate by up to 100% with the latest STEM-oriented Augmented Reality (AR) technology that supports students’ individual learning styles. Our products made with highquality curriculum-based content created by educators with
20 | July 2021
different curriculum experiences. We make the products that we use ourselves and put our hearts and soul in them. Augmented Classroom is an example of the state of art product that incorporate emerging technologies (Augmented Reality and Artificial Intelligence), digital pedagogical frameworks for collaborative simultaneous practices and new teaching and learning available anywhere on any device. Give a detailed description of the featured person’s influence over the company and the industry. Darya Yegorina is a top influential global speaker (rated by Thinkers 360 multiple times) on the topic of AR in Education, the winner of Digital Female Leaders Award in the category of Entrepreneurship in 2018, named as Innovator by Irish Times in 2018, awarded Young Irish Entrepreneur in 2016, Women in IT 2019, Young European Leader in 2020 (#EYL40), featured in Inc.com, Forbes, CBS, and other global media as a promoter and facilitator of education technology for the best future of the kids in the world.
www.insightssuccess.com
How is AR/VR technology disrupting the education industry? AR is making a big difference in the education sector. As visual technology, it has a massive power to make education interesting, though-provoking, and personalized when applied correctly to suitable subjects & school grades.
“
We help students to See, Hear and Touch the Knowledge
What technologies are you leveraging to make your services resourceful? Our company is working with Augmented Reality technology. It has a big spectrum of application and our main focus is to fully apply, integrate, and make it resourceful for the educational sector. The reason for this is the ease of use and integration in teaching and learning processes at any school and any country regardless of the technical level of teaching staff. What are your company’s future aspirations? What strategies are you undertaking to achieve those goals? We change the way the educational content is delivered and the way the education is personalized through seeing, doing, using imagination, enabling students and teachers to merge the realities right in the classroom or at home. CleverBooks aims to set standards for using Augmented Reality in the educational sector by leading bypass disruption.
“
www.insightssuccess.com
July 2021
| 21
HOW THE
TRUST CRITERIA
ARE SET BY THE SOFTWARE REVIEW PLATFORMS?
Dan Stefan CEO Awardo 24 | July 2021
www.insightssuccess.com
Leader's Viewpoint
L
ately, the crisis of trust has led software directories to be prospected by potential customers more often than before. Buyers no longer just look for high ranking software on the major search engines, but rather also prefer to check the experience and other details on specialized platforms. Why do software review platforms become popular?
The first reason is the large number of solutions available for each category. Today, we have hundreds of thousands of solutions ready, from SaaS to desktop, mobile to IoT, for various purposes: internal operations, automatization, marketing and many more. Each solution comes with various features that may or may not meet the needs of companies therefore, manual search for the right solution started to become cumbersome. In the past the first and only option was to hire an IT consultant to help in selecting the right solution. Now, software directories can list the solutions by using specific filters and algorithms that will help the buyer reduce drastically the search range. Buyers want to check customer reviews, what experience they’ve had with the company and if it is trustworthy. A software review platform validates customer reviews and provides a rating score. Reviews are a major player in earning trust among potential buyers. Most software review platforms have comparison tools, buyers are able to compare one software with another, according to some initially established criteria. Everything is done with a few clicks. Software review platforms often publish different charts, trends, insights and reports for different software categories; Unfortunately, some of these reports are also influenced by sponsorship therefore we do recommend being careful when reading these articles and from what sources. How are software solutions ranked on these platforms? Most of the time, when a software is submitted to a directory, such as a software review platform, a manual
www.insightssuccess.com
evaluation is performed by one of their employees prior approval. Manual evaluation usually refers to checking the details of the submission, such as: the website, verifying the contact details, and some platforms check their visibility on the internet if they are not already a well-known brand. Being an approved software in a software directory, especially the most important ones, such as: Awardo, Capterra, Crozdesk, G2, Software Advice, TrustRadius, etc. by default it raises a sort of level of trust or initial rank that also are well received by search engines. Depending on the platform from which you publish the software, the approval rate may be higher or lower, depending on their conditions. The most important part from which a software will be ranked higher on a directory is the review part. Quality reviews are ahead of quantity, but both are indirectly connected by an algorithm to provide an accurate score. The score will dictate the position of the software on a certain category and the position where it will be displayed will dictate the number of impressions. Therefore, the visibility of the software on a directory is strongly connected with the earned review score. Unfortunately, there are situations on some platforms where the position of a solution is influenced by sponsorship, but major platforms mention this to buyers and they can always filter by removing sponsorship/featured listings. Another complementary criteria on the basis of which a software can be well ranked is the completion of as many details as possible in the software profile. With no doubt a complete profile is better than a partial one with important details missing (s.a. Pricing, Support details, etc.). As a buyer, what is the best review platform to look for software? After providing the above information, the questions arise which platform is best to start looking for the right software. In my opinion, there is no “best” software review platform out there on the internet, the most appropriate way of searching for a software is to go on all major ones mentioned above in this article. Try searching the internet for other software review platforms and use their search and comparison tools to see what you get. Exploring all major platforms will help you find a more accurate and shorter list of the right software. By - Dan Stefan, CEO, Awardo
July 2021
| 25
Gal Shvebish
Co- Founder & CEO Snaappy
28 | July 2021
www.insightssuccess.com
World's Top 05 AR/VR Solution Providers, 2021
Making Visual Communication More Approachable “
S
cience has narrowed the line between reality and virtual.” AR and VR two leading agile technologies are an excellent example for this statement which are transforming view of digital world as we have never imagined before. Using VR gadgets as a bridge between reality and virtual world consumer’s experience has increased exceptionally, on the other side AR is merging reality and virtual world and opening new dimensions in research, education, gaming, social media and various other sectors. Making AR a new way of communication and sharing emotions, Snaappy, an Augmented Reality company, is creating 3D animated characters which help to express emotions when words are not enough. Below are highlights of the interview conducted between Insights Success and Snaappy: What led to the inception of the Snaappy? Snaappy was founded about 4 years ago as a totally different company than it is today. We started as a messenger for younger audience with many sophisticated visual and artificial intelligence features. Although, we had experienced an organic user growth, it didn’t quite meat our initial expectations. Two years ago, we decided to use our 3D visual characters and broader our vision to a full blonde social network based on proprietary Augmented Reality technology. Describe your company and its cutting-edge VR/AR services which address all the needs of your customers. Our company is B2C AR first, which means we are providing tools to end consumers so they could create, and www.insightssuccess.com
July 2021
| 29
share unique AR content such as videos, messages, location-based content etc. These days we are launching our first B2B AR services, allowing brands to take advantage of our AR content creation tools to launch innovative AR marketing video campaigns on different social platforms created by their own audience and their own 3D AR assets. The first few marketing campaigns will be launched in China in a few weeks. Could you throw some light on your mission and vision statement? Our vision is to build an eco-system of consumer products based on AR technology. We have started our journey with an AR social network at first and gradually we are adding more products. Now we are working on our second product as well which is a full AR game that is connected to the social platform. We hope that within a few years we could lead the AR landscape for social, entertainment and gaming, whether it is on mobile or on wearables. How are your AR/VR services unique from the other companies’ offerings? Our AR services are very different in vision and tech than any other AR services currently provided. I would like to focus on just 2 main points which I think are the most relevant ones: AR angle – we are building AR features based on a SLAM engine which are being used only through the back camera. Most of the famous, successful services that are decorating themselves as AR (like Snapchat, Facebook, Instagram etc.) are built on face detection technologies which are utilizing the front camera. If one should look ahead to the near future, one would see that mobile AR is only a temporary phase towards the real wearable AR vison. We take AR very seriously and we try to look at it as a serious content creation tool and not merely a gimmick. When we analyzed the worldwide AR market, we found that most companies are investing their resources in creating a small amount of astonishing AR experiences that users might adore in a first glance but will never repeat it twice. We are looking at it from a totally different angle, we prefer to have far more AR experiences (we have more than 60M at the moment and counting) so every user who will launch our app could use it to tell their own story using the AR props they need and not tell the story that our product engineers want them to tell like on any other AR platform out there. In that case users understand they have much
30 | July 2021
www.insightssuccess.com
“
Our mission is to connect users with a smile on their faces.
more freedom in Snaappy than on any other AR competitor (even at small quality cost). Give a detailed description of the featured person’s influence over the company and the industry. As Snaappy’s CEO, Gal is leading the vision, product, business development and marketing efforts. Gal is highly involved with the day to day activities, creating the AR philosophy and making sure the company will align with it. Furthermore, Gal is an experienced AR speaker, mobile speaker as well as an opinion leader who is lecturing all over the globe in front of different audiences about the present and future of AR. What technologies are you leveraging to make your services resourceful?
“
We are working with many different technologies. The main ones are AR, AI, location and 5G. Most of the tech is being developed in house, except of the 5G that is being developed alongside selected telecom partners. What are your company’s future aspirations? What strategies are you undertaking to achieve those goals? We want to become a world leader in the consumer AR space within a few years, specifically in the AR software apace (social, entertainment and gaming). Our strategy is to enhance short videos creation process to introduce AR use cases, benefits and best practices to the mass consumer market.
www.insightssuccess.com
July 2021
| 31