Almost a year after opening up its Augmented Reality (AR) technology to third-party software developers, Facebook has taken baby steps in bringing the technology to 270 million Indian users by building India-specific software.

At the F8 conference in April last year, Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg had opened up the development of AR images and interactive experiences to its new Camera Effects platform. With AR, an enhanced version of reality is created by harnessing technology to overlay digital information on real-world images.

With its announcement last year, Facebook opened up the platform to third-party app developers who can use codes and connect it with Facebook’s Messenger or Instagram apps. So, a person can point the phone camera towards oneself — as when taking a selfie — and Facebook’s camera effects app gets activated.

“We are getting started and the initial headway we have made looks promising in India,” said Satyajeet Singh, Head of Strategic Product Partnerships, Facebook India and South Asia.

For example, Alivenow, a digital marketing and creative tech agency, is using the Facebook AR technology to help brands engage better with customers with an eye on higher sales.

“We partnered with Laneige, a Korean skincare products maker, to roll out a AR-powered camera effect where users could try different types of lipsticks, eye make-up and blush through their Facebook camera,” said Adhvith Dhuddu, founder and CEO, AliveNow.

Similarly, Sportz Interactive used face-tracker and bone-scripting capabilities of AR Studio to build the camera effect for the IPL this year for Mumbai Indians, Kings XI Punjab and Kolkata Knight Riders. Once a user decides to take a selfie, the effect tracks the face and ‘dresses’ the person up in the club jersey.

Larger strategy

Others, like Shabir Momin, MD of Zenga TV, who has invested in HoloSuit, an AR start-up, believes that its application can be effectively used in other spheres such as healthcare, military, industrial and training.

These efforts are a part of Facebook’s larger strategy around the potential of AR technologies and their revenue-generating capabilities by engaging with brands. It even bought a start-up, Oculus Rift, for $2 billion, underlining its intent.

Enormous scope

The logic, according to industry watchers, is to open source the development of these kinds of apps, which can be in multiples of thousands, instead of a few dozen when the software development is done in-house.

“The intent is also to go beyond software developers and make the platform easy to use so that even marketers and artists can create their own apps,” added Facebook’s Singh.

As the company marches forward with this technology, however, it is facing massive headwinds related to user privacy issues.

The global market for AR is expected to grow from $20 billion today to $150 billion by 2020, according to Digi-Capital, a consulting firm.

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