Metadome.ai has vision of making immersive technology accessible: Kanav Singla

Metadome, earlier known as Adloid, was founded in Nov. 2016, with the vision to create immersive product experiences using 3D and XR. Metadome.ai is the platform today for enabling interoperable immersive experiences on the web.

Kanav Singla, founder and CEO, Metadome.ai, tells us more. Excerpts from an interview:

DQ: Tell us about Metadome.ai and the services that your company offers?

Kanav Singla: Metadome.ai is a global 3D and XR technology company that is leading the XR roadmap of Fortune 500 companies, and enabling brands with end-to-end creation and deployment of immersive customer experience across web, app, and in-store. With office presence across India and the USA, the company is a pioneer in XR with 6+ years of expertise and a go-to option for global brands across multiple industries like automotive, home décor, fashion, and cosmetics and accessories.

The company has already powered more that 5 million XR experiences for 15+ clients, with more that 140 million of combined time spent, has products live across 11 geographies, and multiple patents to its name. Metadome.ai is working with industry leaders like Google, AWS, TCS, SAP, and has been a part of accelerator programs by Stanford, Google, Amazon, Nvidia, in addition to being a close member of Global 3D and XR associations like Metaverse Standard Forum, VRAR Association.

With their flagship immersive platform for the automotive industry, Autodome, the company is helping global automakers in driving virtual car sales and creating virtual worlds for their consumers. These applications cover the entire pre-retail funnel, empowering brands to launch their products virtually and drive awareness, engagement, and bookings among modern automotive consumers.

Specific products include 3D product Configurators, AR experience, VR experience, Virtual Sales Assistant, Virtual Showrooms, Virtual Test Drives, Virtual Product Launch, and Virtual Events like Auto Expo.

DQ: What were the company's goals and objectives when it was founded?

Kanav Singla: The company, earlier known as Adloid, was founded in 2016, with the mission to help enterprises adopt AR-commerce, enabling them to showcase their products in AR and drive better engagement and conversions through it. The broader vision was to make immersive technology accessible to all and leveraging its potential for enterprises.

With time, as the maturity, adoption, and business case around XR grew, the company ventured into other verticals like creating virtual showrooms for brands, immersive retail-store applications including VR, and expanded its platform capabilities to support a variety of applications around immersive technology. This transition was fueled by the impact of Covid-19 on physical businesses and the brand’s need to have larger digital footprints.

In 2021, along with concluding its pre-series A funding from Chiratae Ventures, Lenskart Venture Fund, LetsVenture, and others, the company rebranded to Metadome, soon after Facebook's rebranding to Meta, and ventured into other verticals of immersive technology like Game Engines and Cloud Streaming. This led to further updates to the core platform and new applications like Virtual Worlds, Virtual Test Drive, Virtual Product Launch and Events came to light. Parallelly, work in AI led to AI-led Virtual Assistance and Virtual Consultation Solution for enterprises.

During the journey, the company was selected for multiple incubation and acceleration opportunities like the SAP Accelerator, Google for Startup program, AWS Startup program, Stanford Seed Transformation Program, and stitched channel partnerships with the likes of TCS, SAP, PWC, etc. It also became member of organizations like AR/VR Association, Metaverse Standard Forums, etc. The company has also expanded to other geographies with offices in the US and active work in the Europe and MENA region.

As an industry, the company found its niche in the automotive space and has created a dedicated platform, Autodome,for enabling automotive OEMs in redefining their customer experience. We are a proud partner to global automakers like MG Motor, Stellantis, Lexus, Mahindra, Royal Enfield, Tata Motors, Hero MotoCorp, among others. The core platform, however, is sector agnostic, and serves players across industries like Asian Paints, Sugar Cosmetics, Titan, and HUL.

DQ: What are your growth plans and the brands you are targeting in the upcoming months?

Kanav Singla: The company is going strong towards its vision of making immersive technology accessible and enabling brands in redefining how they engage their consumers, enabling captivating experiences that delight and convert.

The growth plan includes further expansion in international markets like creating a strong team in the US and more focus on Europe and MENA. Likewise, the company is looking to increase its talent pool in India with hiring across multiple roles. The company has already moved into its own private office and is building a great team.

Further, building awareness remains a priority and the company wants to be present in front of the key stakeholders, together with stitching relevant partnerships with technology players, marketing and digital agencies, and other organizations for business acceleration. Participation in incubators is another focus.

In terms of brands, the key focus remains in the automotive, home decor, cosmetics, lifestyle and accessory industry, and is going strong in terms of onboarding brands from these categories from the key geographies mentioned above.

DQ: What brand associations have been done so far?

Kanav Singla: We have several brand associations. In automobiles, there are MG Motor, Mahindra & Mahindra, Lexus, Stellantis, Tata Motors, Royal Enfield, Hero MotoCorp, Battre, Joy e-bike, etc, In non-automobile, we have brands such as Titan, Sugar, Bebeautiful, Asian Paints, HUL, etc.

DQ: Tell us about the recent association with MG Motors, and the launch of MGVerse?

Kanav Singla: Metadome.ai has stitched a strategic partnership with MG Motor to transform the automaker’s customer experiences across all channels — web, app, and in-store. MG Motor will leverage our flagship automotive platform, Autodome, in redefining their customer experiences across channels, captivating their consumers, staying relevant to the new-age buyer, and to advance their future driven positioning in the industry.

Towards this end, we have created an inventory-less and immersive dealership experience that MG Motor is piloting in malls of Chennai and Mumbai. The entire experience involves multiple immersive technologies like AR, VR, Gamification in the form of Virtual Test Drives, 3D Car Configurators, and Virtual Avatar Assistant to give a delightful experience to the modern consumers of malls without the use of an actual car.

This model will soon be scaled across all the prime locations in India and enable a cost effective dealership to engage the consumers and eventually convert them into retail. Similarly, we have created an entire virtual world for the MG Motor that is live and hosted on their own website and which runs on any device.

It is an expansive virtual world, consisting of an avatar zone where consumers can create their unique avatars, and a creator zone consisting of a multi-car showroom with a 3D car configurator and an opportunity to experience virtual test drives.

Additionally, the MGVerse also brought a digital twin of the MG pavilion at Auto Expo 2023, empowering the internet and automotive enthusiast community to visit the Auto Expo virtually from the comfort of their homes in an industry-first immersive approach. The entire experience is multiplayer and you can invite your friends and family to join in real-time.

DQ: How Metadome.ai is contributing to the automotive industry?

Kanav Singla: With the automotive buying journey moving online, and new-age customers demanding digital experiences more than ever, brands today are investing in immersive customer experiences with an omnichannel approach.

At Metadome.ai, we are pioneering the immersive technologies for enabling captivating customer experiences for automakers. From redefining the website customer journey, enabling immersive experiences that engage better and generate healthier leads, to transforming the retail stores, going inventory-less and creating a low-cost scalable dealership model to reach consumers across modern touch points, and to accelerating the brand's adoption of XR and Metaverse via virtual retailing and events, our immersive 3D and XR technology is transforming the way automobile industry engages with their consumers, one OEM at a time.

We are already helping our brands in enabling customer experience that has significantly reduced the bounce rates, increased the engagement time, and are leading to higher conversion rates in terms of online booking and test drive booking.

DQ: What are the technologies metadome.ai is using to offer its services?

Kanav Singla: Metadome.ai uses WebGL,WebRTC, Game Engines, AWS, GCP, and Azure as external technologies. We have developed our own suite of tools and platforms for the entire workflow– starting with content development, to deployment and maintenance.

DQ: What technologies are ruling the tech trends in 2023?

Kanav Singla: I would say, XR, Metaverse, Generative AI, AI-led Virtual Assistance, Haptics, etc., are ruling.