Kanav Singla first thought of venturing into the field of augmented reality (AR) in 2016, while working with some of the leading minds and companies of India, when he was still a student at IIT-Delhi. He was a first-year student of civil engineering when the idea of Adloid was born. Inspired to bring disruption through technology, he chose to skip campus placements and instead got acquainted with several business leaders, including the CEOs of leading e-commerce companies.
“I was observing how more and more retailers and companies were going online as were their customers even back then, and naturally the needs of both would evolve over time. At that time, AR was still at a nascent stage, but as I researched about it, realisation dawned that this is going to be the future of retail,” recalls the now 27-year-old, adding, “That’s what Adloid continues working towards, and now we having on boarded 10 clients, which include Hero Motorcorp, Tata Motors, Cardekho, and Asian Paints. India’s marketplace is clearly seeing AR-technology as the mainstream way to go.”
Coming from a family of entrepreneurs, striking out on his own comes naturally to Singla, who has also co-founded Banana Media and is a business partner at SAP.iO. Moreover, he is a Vice President of VR AR Association Bangalore, a global community of VR and AR companies and enthusiasts.
“My passion is my work, which is all about bleeding-edge technology and disruption, and I enjoy always challenging myself in order to innovate and always be able to provide our customers with the best, most advanced, solutions,” he shares.
“We are an omni-channel in the sense that we work everywhere from your device to the company’s website to their retail outlet. While one still needs retail outlets, rising rent and logistic costs don’t make it feasible to keep your entire inventory there. As more shops begin to open we have worked with our clients to make their spaces AR-enabled and more accessible to their customers,” explains Singla.
“We started our company in 2019 after 30 months of R&D. Within the first quarter of 2020, before the pandemic hit, we’d already run a successful pilot with clients and they have retained us since. So yes, AR is here to stay,” asserts Singla.