Sai Krishna VK, the co-founder of Scapic, said that people need not visit the showroom as he can give them an almost showroom-like experience. He believes augmented reality will enhance retail experiences during the pandemic. His team developed Flipkart’s newly-introduced 3D shopping aspect that allows users to juxtapose their home’s furniture through augmented reality on the smartphone. The famous e-commerce firm is simplifying how people shop for a center table or sofa by using augmented reality to see how these would look in their house.
Ajay Poona Venkatesh and Krishna had founded Scapic in 2017. The Bengaluru-based firm used to provide WebXR-based solutions to clients across the marketing and e-commerce sector. Flipkart then acquired it last year. Krishna’s team presently works exclusively on Flipkart camera, which is the country’s largest AR platform of services for e-commerce.
3D shopping feature
Users do not require any separate app to visualize sofas, tables, or chairs in augmented reality. One just needs to open the Flipkart app, look for a furniture piece, and click on the “View in your room” option. The novel 3D shopping feature, with the aid of the users’ smartphone cameras, lets them position and see a furniture piece in their home before ordering.
Giant plans
The AR aspect is currently limited to the furniture category and includes dining tables, beds, coffee tables, office chairs, etc. However, in the upcoming months, the e-commerce giant plans to replicate a similar augmented reality experience where a person can try eyeshadows or lipstick through the phone’s front camera.
Benefit retail
Krishna believes that augmented reality will try and bring things as close as possible to how the world was before the pandemic. He said that if a buyer can place a washing machine or a TV on one side, or on the other side, put makeup, spectacles, or filters, he thinks augmented reality will benefit retail. But, he knows it will take time before the AR technology becomes easy to understand.
Initial step
It has been a week since the company began including AR as part of the item’s story on its e-commerce platform. He said that the initial step is to familiarize customers with the technology and how augmented reality can completely change buying furniture. Krishna further emphasized that nine out of 10 buyers do not have a clue that they can even do this on their smartphones. He further talked about their current goal to create the simplest, smallest, and easiest features that people can experience on their phones.
Interact with consumers
AR allows e-commerce firms like Flipkart to interact with consumers by bringing together the digital and physical worlds. However, the ecosystem around augmented reality is still missing. Hence, Krishna feels that there must be a use case that takes advantage of cellphone cameras as it might help increase augmented reality’s mass adoption. He further predicted that the camera will become a prominent part of the shopping experience later. Krishna described AR as an “killer” aspect in a much larger application and compares it with voice search.
