The Hindu Business Line : Virtual walk through homes before buying

Bangalore, Feb. 28 You can walk right in, peep inside the kitchen, spend some time in the bedroom, look out of the windows to see if you like the view and then decide if the flat is worth buying. And all of it can be done sitting at your computer while having lunch in office.

Logix Microsystems Ltd, a Bangalore-based software product company, has developed a new product that takes one on a virtual walk-through of the house one is interested in buying.

Mr Sanjay Soni, Managing Director, said the product would probably be called Izmo Reality and would be available in the US from April.

The company would use photographs of model flats to create this virtual experience, Mr Soni said. He said the product would use very high resolution images, but they would be compressed so that the file size remains small. One animation would be of 6-7 megabytes, making it accessible even on low bandwidth. He said large real estate developers would be the principal customers for this product.

Suitable time

Mr Soni said one animation would cost less than $10,000 and would include interior and exterior shots of the property. He said this is a good time to enter the US market because property prices are low. People from other countries would be interested in buying property and they would find this product extremely useful, Mr Soni added.

He said the product is expensive compared to advertisements using still photographs, and it might take some time to convince real estate developers to use it. The product would be introduced in West Asia and India as well after a couple of quarters. In India, the product would cost much less, he added.

Logix at present has an e-commerce platform for automobile retail in the US. The company also has a car animation library comprising about 1,800 models since 2002, it said. The car animations are used by General Motors Corp, Ford Motor Co and Mitsubishi Motors, among others, the company said.

Car animation plan

Mr Soni said they are planning to extend the car animation business in Europe.

The company would be investing about €2 million to set up a sales network and a studio in either Brussels or Rotterdam. The studio would be set up by the end of June, he said.

The company is initially interested in UK, Germany and France, Mr Soni added.

Logix would also be talking to the European automobile manufacturers about their dealers using Logix’s e-commerce platform for automobile retail, Mr Soni said. He said the company is in talks with a software provider to the automobile manufacturers for a possible joint venture. The joint venture would help Logix with contacts, he added.

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