One of the aftermaths of Covid-19 is consumer brands searching and adopting technologies that can provide an experience as close to exploring products in real life as possible, going beyond pictures and textual content. Serving this is the Bengaluru-based HelloAR, with its low code 3D platform. “Before Covid-19, during our experimentation, we realised that a lot of AR/VR expenditures by organisations were coming from R&D budgets. CIOs were willing to allot only a small fraction of the budget for AR innovation,” says Suresh K, founder and CEO, HelloAR.
“When the demand picked up during the pandemic, this allotment became a main interest for their budget and we ventured into used car and furniture spaces with our platform which saw a surge in sales,” says Suresh. The startup has also ventured into consumer durables post Covid-19. At the core of its platform is an engine which converts existing product images from a brand catalogue into 3D visual repositories and applies AR, user interaction objects on it, allowing the finished visuals to be deployed for either training or e-commerce exhibitions. “The brands can do this on their own with drag and drop operations on our platform. There is very little to no service component involved in our model which makes it highly scalable,” says Suresh.
The startup also has a mobile app which can be used to capture pictures of products and generate the 3D visuals in the absence of existing images. All the visuals are then integrated into the brand websites. “We charge the brand depending on the size of the catalog they want to create 3D visuals for and the usage of the same on their e-stores or websites via our APIs,” says Suresh.
With over 200,000 products modelled on the platform from about 50 customers, the startup aims to grow to $5 million ARR in the next couple of years. The startup has remained largely bootstrapped and has recently raised an undisclosed amount from friends and family as an investment.
With margins around 75%, HelloAR aims to become profitable in the next few months. “We want to go deeper into the Indian market in the next six months. After this, we want to venture into the middle east and the US markets as well,” says Suresh.