Ambarish Mitra, Blippar, sees the business potential of augmented reality
Mr Mitra is chief executive and co-founder of Blippar, a rapidly growing tech company, which specialises in augmented reality, artificial intelligence and computer vision. Its free app turns a smartphone camera into a tool that scans, recognises and identifies everyday objects and brings up online information about them on the screen. Blippar can also use augmented reality to launch videos and other content.
“Fifty per cent of things are in your control. But the macro environment is not,” Mr Mitra says, speaking by phone on a trip to Cologne. Blippar could not have predicted the explosion in smartphone camera use when the founders first thought of harnessing the power of visual recognition.
“It was just good timing,” he says. “Our industry is full of dead bodies.”