One of India’s leading e-commerce giants, Flipkart, has announced the acquisition of the Augmented Reality (AR) startup Scapic today. Flipkart says that the purpose of the acquisition of Scapic is to enhance the e-commerce giant’s “immersive shopping experience capabilities.” The investment value is of an undisclosed amount, and the deal comes soon after the acquisition of the gaming start-up Mech Mocha.
Through this deal, the Flipkart group will get a 100% stake in the company and will assign a team of developers and designers. The e-commerce giant says that this team will work towards “accelerating the company’s efforts to provide deeper camera experiences, virtual storefronts and new opportunities for brand advertising on its platform.”
Scapic is a Bengaluru-based startup which was founded in 2017. It provides a cloud-based platform which lets its customers create and publish immersive Augmented Reality, Virtual Reality (VR) and 3D content. The SaaS (Software as a Service) platform tries to provide tools that help create these immersive experiences and content without the need to code. The current clientele of the company spans across domains such as e-commerce and marketing.
The profound changes brought by the pandemic has influenced customer habits, and one of them is the increased inclination towards shopping online. After all, online shopping remains a safer and a more convenient alternative to regular shopping, and because of these factors, the e-commerce market continues to grow bigger and bigger day by day.
Flipkart wants to provide its growing users with a better and richer shopping experience, and they are bidding on the AR technology to accomplish this. “Customers now require better visuals than ever before. Scapic is building visual technology that brings products to life using Augmented Reality and 3D,” said V K Sai Krishna & Ajay P V, Co-Founders, Scapic.
Augmented Reality involves scanning the physical environment through a device’s camera and placing digital content within it, which can also be interacted with, through the device. This provides users an immersive experience by letting them bridge the gap between software and their immediate environment.
Scapic has published an elaborate post, detailing their future plans and providing information on what they seek to accomplish in collaboration with Flipkart. The company has also updated their website, and the message displayed on the homepage reads, “Today, we’re excited to announce that we’ve been acquired by Flipkart. So, what’s next? We think the camera is the next frontier for commerce, and will be building the AR platform for a billion Indians. We’re just getting started.”
