The Internet and Mobile Association of India (IAMAI) has formed a new industry expert committee, under its Emerging Technology Council, focused on Augmented and Virtual Reality (AR/VR). The AR/VR Committee is the latest step in its efforts to evangelise AR/VR technology to drive economic growth, job creation, and skill development in the country. The committee would also closely work to develop potential sectors like Healthcare, Tourism, Auto, Agriculture, Education and Skill Development. The mandate of the Group is to identify opportunities and challenges to help India’s AR/VR ecosystem, in partnership with government, industry and startups.
The committee is chaired by Namrita Mahindro, Senior General Manager, – Digital Transformation, Mahindra Group and co-chaired by Satyajeet Singh, Head –Strategic Product Partnership, India & South Asia, Facebook. Other prominent members of the committee include Vaibhav Kumar Yadav, Product Head- JioCinema and GM-Reliance JIO, Ajit Kumar, Partner, Deloitte Digital, Mahesh Prabhu, VP-Global Head of Innovation, ITC Infotech, Vivek M Jain, Founder, FlippAR, Kshitij Marwah, Founder, Tesseract Inc , Ninad Chhaya, Co-Founder & COO, GoPhygital , Utsav Mathur, Founder, GMETRI, amongst others.
On the agenda of this committee will be a) nurturing India’s AR/VR technology and talent ecosystem, in particular by driving Skill Development b) engaging with business, industry and government to evangelize acceptance of the technology c) Help drive training workshops, to familarise potential users with technology and build use cases, in key sectors.
Namrita Mahindro, Chairperson, AR/VR Committee, IAMAI & Senior General Manager, – Digital Transformation, Mahindra Group said, “Immersive technologies like AR / VR and Mixed Reality will become the new engines of values creation in the experience economy. They will enable far more effective storytelling for brands and businesses, drive greater efficiencies with product prototyping in manufacturing & beyond, facilitate training at scale, anytime, anywhere, to name just a few use cases.
However, in order to be more effective and scale AR / VR to become mainstream needs industry, government and academia working in synergy. The IAMAI AR / VR committee will focus onfostering collaboration between industry demand and supply side in the digital reality ecosystem to enhance awareness, enable dialogue, knowledge sharing and access, accelerate growth, promote research and innovation, help develop industry standards and nurture talent to benefit all stakeholders in the community”.
Satyajeet Singh, Co-Chairperson, AR/VR Committee, IAMAI & Head –Strategic Product Partnership, India & South Asia, Facebook, added “AR and VR technologies are making their mark across domains and Indian startups’ foray in the space of emerging tech is only the beginning. This expert committee formed under the aegis of IAMAI is a much needed initiative which will further provide an impetus for the growth and expansion of emerging technologies across the length and breadth of our country. As a part of this committee, we want to fuel homegrown emerging technologies ecosystem; enabling AR/VR ventures with the knowledge and help them navigate andharvest the growing opportunities in this new age emerging tech ecosystem.”
