“CUBE is an XR experience builder platform in a box that has the potential to change the way businesses communicate, collaborate, and operate” – By, Mr. Anshul Agarwal, Co-Founder, XR Central 

Please introduce your company and your products?

We are XR Central, headquartered in Gurgaon, HR. We develop immersive collaborative virtual spaces for brands across industries to accelerate their digital journeys. We have developed CUBE, as a DIY SaaS platform that will democratize the way XR experiences have been created, published, and consumed. XR is an umbrella term that stands for extended reality and it involves technology such as virtual, augmented, and mixed reality. We serve IT& Tech, Aviation, Automotive & Manufacturing, Pharma, Events, and FMCG industries.

What were you doing before turning into an entrepreneur? Please take us through your journey and tell us how you started. What was the motivation behind it? 

I come from an extensive technology sales and marketing background. Before starting XR Central, I have been in mid-management roles with top IT companies in India. I hold an MBA degree from a public IVY league based out of the east coast of the US. My entrepreneur mindset & journey kicked in when I moved to silicon valley to work for a start-up back in 2014. I have been fortunate enough to travel and engage with many brands globally. I have developed a respect for various cultures and have also understood the monetizing opportunities in the XR space in the global market. I am driven by conversations with people. I learn and unlearn in the same way.

What motivates me?

Opportunities to transform brands, conversations that have thoughts about the future of technology and many industries, and most importantly the young and enthusiastic team that XRC has kept me on the toes and ever motivated to achieve greater heights. As a team, together our motto is to explore the unexplored potential of the technology that we are working with and that is very critical to keep things moving and create a vibrant & motivating environment.

Tell us about the platform cube and what inspired you to build such an interface? How the platform allows clients to create a highly customized 3D of virtual space?

Three years back, we realized that virtual, augmented and mixed reality has unexplored potential and will become mainstream across enterprises globally. The combination of storytelling, customized user experiences, and XR technologies has tremendous opportunities to accelerate the digital journeys of brands. For the past few years, we operated as a services company and executed some brilliant use cases for our diverse set of clients. Basis our conversation with them, we realized that for XR to become mainstream there needs to be a platform that is simple, quick, and cheap to use and create XR experiences. We sat on the drawing board and listed down the exact gap in today’s XR ecosystem and realized that we need the ecosystem to be opened up to the masses.

CUBE was born with easy to use interface. CUBE is an XR experience builder platform in a box that has the potential to change the way businesses communicate, collaborate, and operate. The benefit of CUBE is that anyone can create and publish collaborative virtual setups in minutes. You do not need to have any coding or any tool know-how. All the experiences built on CUBE have an inbuilt VR and AR port and the best part- it works across devices and is the browser’s first experience.

What were the challenges you faced being a start-up and what motivated you to keep going?

The initial challenge was educating the clients and prospects and stakeholders about the potential of AR and VR. We always say “XR offers you Limitless Possibilities”. You just image and we go beyond the imagined and craft an experience that will wow the target audience. The challenge of creating awareness about the possibilities excited us every day and we kept on moving ahead and building stories.

What were the impacts of covid and your key learnings from it? How do you see the start-up ecosystem progressing in 2021?

As the uncertain situation arose, it was our, XR Central’s, responsibility to contribute to the well-being of society. We are continuously monitoring the situation from all regions of our operation and are leaving no gap in making sure our employees and their families are safe and in good health. We have made it a mandate for all our employees to be fully vaccinated and they must submit the certificate to us. Travel is on hold. All our employees are enabled to work from efficiently and productively from their homes. At the same time, we understand that the business must go on, hence we appreciate our customers understanding of the urgency of the situation and allowing all our workforce to continue to work remotely.

My key learning has been- stay resilient. Only the wise and the resilient will survive and see the daylight. This is the same message I give to my entire team, that one must try and stay resilient in professional and personal lives.

Tell us something about AR and VR and how it works?

AR stands for Augmented Reality and VR for Virtual Reality. These have been around for many many years now. Despite the opportunities and potential that these technologies have, brands have not made a shift towards this technology due to the heavy cost and device dependency. However, with the rise of the technologies like WebGL, the XR technology today is now being developed to be functioning on the web which eliminates the device dependency and also the hefty interoperability cost associated with it. Especially in India, now the web-based approach is slowly catching up and more and more brands have already started putting XR technology as a part of their growth strategy.

If I have to simply put it- we all know what IoT has done to the world, it’s connected it. Tons of data is being generated and being dumped into data lakes. As more and more devices get connected or even humans get connected to machines, this trend of data generation will keep on exponentially increasing. So what AR and VR do is that they provide a visualization layer. Now with these technologies so-called immersive technologies, businesses can rethink their strategies and make more meaning of data, experiences, and many more by utilizing the XR technology stacks. XR technology has a tremendous opportunity to accelerate the digital journeys of enterprises. It finds its application in almost every business segment- Marketing, HR, Sales, Delivery, etc. XRC is one of the very few organizations in India to start the transformation for clients and has a focus on web-based approaches application of AR and VR. In the years to come- XR is going to be leading the way for brands to interact with clients and prospects, of course, AI will also be in close collaboration with XR.

Any advice for future entrepreneurs?

The only piece of advice I can say is- take that risk, only baby steps will make your move don’t procrastinate for someone to teach you to take larger steps. Learn and unlearn throughout the process and be happy. Success is a derivative of your happiness.