Chennai warms up to Virtual, Augmented Reality

Several vibrant new companies in the city, helmed by young minds are ensuring that the technology is made optimum use of – and more importantly, awareness is spread on its applications.

Sabarish Chandrasekar, co-founder of The Social mind, a future tech start-up in Chennai that works actively with businesses to improve their client experience, says, “Many large corporate companies have already embraced the phenomenon, and the smaller firms are slowly coming on board. We had the age of laptops and mobile phones, and we strongly believe that next is the age of VR. When the likes of Facebook and Sony invested heavily in VR a few years ago, we knew this was an untapped market.”

The applications in daytoday life are aplenty. From doctors using VR during physiotherapy sessions to lessen pain levels of patients, and immersive learning experiences in classrooms and colleges, to films (AR Rahman’s multi-sensory movie Le Musk in a case in point) and fitness trainers promoting virtual gyms to clients, the possibilities are endless in several fields.

C Ramthilak, who runs an event management company in the city, adds that the tech is not as unaffordable as many may imagine it to be. “We enlisted the help of a firm in the US to help us with a large scale event and the VR headset helped us visualise the entire spectacle beforehand, while all of us were sitting around a table. Actually, some of us were in different locations, but could all be part of the meeting.

More importantly, clients are really impressed that we can show them an exact plan, even before the ground work starts.

We initially thought it might hit our budget, but the service was surprisingly affordable. Now that companies in Chennai offer the same, it is even cheaper.” And of course, for gamers such as Raghul Siddarth, the future seems brighter than ever. “It is fascinating that tech, which kick-started from the gaming world, is making waves in other sectors now. There are so many games that are now designed especially for specific users – be it entering into a fantasy world with wizards, flying a plane, or going on a leisurely trek. As the industry is getting taken more seriously nowadays, it is a great time to be in gaming,” he says enthusiastically.