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These Indian Companies Are Taking Virtual Reality And Artificial Intelligence To The Next Level

The coolest “Made In India” artificial intelligence startups.

A girl tries out a virtual reality entertainment system at a store in the Mcleod Ganj area of Dharamshala, India on Sunday, June 5, 2016. (Photographer: Sara Hylton/Bloomberg)
A girl tries out a virtual reality entertainment system at a store in the Mcleod Ganj area of Dharamshala, India on Sunday, June 5, 2016. (Photographer: Sara Hylton/Bloomberg)

It’s 2017 and artificial intelligence (AI) and virtual reality (VR) are still viewed as emerging technologies. A few Indian technology companies are trying to ensure that these emerging technologies become ubiquitous in every office and home in India and showcased their progress at the recently-concluded NASSCOM India Leadership Forum 2017.

Fluid AI: Clicks And Taps Are So 2016

That’s exactly what the founders of Fluid AI are trying to accomplish. The Mumbai-based startup was founded by two brothers Abhinav and Raghav Aggarwal who believe AI can be used across industries, sectors and use cases. They want to revolutionise customer experience with touchless boardrooms and futuristic experience centres.

The startup’s AI solution can turn any store in a screen into a smart, gesture-controlled interactive screen. Customers can stand before this screen and explore products and services on offer only through gestures. Forget Microsoft Kinect and Pokemon Go, this augmented reality experience using infrared experience is set to change the way we bank, travel and shop.

Both brothers are self-taught coders and dropouts from two of India’s premier business schools. Younger brother Abhinav dropped out of ISB Hyderabad and Raghav left his term at Indian Institute of Management-Ahmedabad unfinished.

They like to define their team as “Disruptors. Techies. Builders. Entrepreneurs. Drop outs. PHDs. Creators. Dreamers. Doers”

Loop Reality: Indoor Biking For Real?

This Hyderabad-based startup has found a simple solution to your biggest fitness problem. Using VR, IoT and analytics, Loop Reality has created an immersive indoor biking solution called LoopFit. It combines smart software with simple hardware to offer a truly unique VR experience.

LoopFit can sync with all your wearable devices to track your heart rate, calories burnt, pedaling speed, power and so on. The bike’s pedals automatically adjust their resistance based on the map that you are cycling in; so it’s much harder to climb a mountain and easier to descend the slope of a bridge in the LoopFit map.

Manthan’s Maya: A CEO’s Best Friend?

Be it software or hardware, global tech behemoths have been working hard in the personal assistant space. Google launched Assistant along with its devices Home and Pixel. Apple is constantly tweaking Siri on all its devices. Amazon has also been very active in this space with its smart speaker Echo powered by its formidable voice assistant Alexa. But there has to be a better use case for these smart devices than dimming the lights in your hallway or playing your favourite music on YouTube. What if the CEO of a company in Mumbai wants to know what his sales numbers are like in Miami? How can AI provide him with the data he needs without clicking a button or making a phone call?

That’s the void Bengaluru-based business analytics company wants to fill with Maya. A CEO can interact with Manthan’s Analytics suite and his company’s data via its personal assistant Maya. That’s the software end of things. For hardware, the company has used Amazon’s Echo device. Maya uses machine learning and neural networks to predict and explain cause and effect.

Caveat employees! Maya is watching your every move and all your manager needs to do is ask her. The software sifts through millions of data points, analyses them and gives you a specific response in a matter of seconds.