Having made it abroad, Indonesia’s AR Group sets its sights on its home market: Page 2 of 2

A solid foundation in Indonesia
Although the company was born in Indonesia, 70% of AR Group’s projects are deployed in international market, including Singapore, Malaysia, the Philippines, Myanmar, Hong Kong, and Spain. Based in Jakarta, the company has offices in Singapore, the Silicon Valley, New York, Barcelona, and Malta.

Its AR campaigns have won the top award at the Augmented World Expo (AWE) two years in a row, for the Dutch Lady Flying Farm campaign in 2016 and Next for Nigeria, a campaign for Nigerian president Muhammadu Buhari in 2015.

The company established its AR engine in Indonesia in 2009 when the technology infrastructure was not very sophisticated. This proved to be a blessing in disguise.

“We needed to ensure that our engine survived in any kind of network connection environment. In Indonesia, network connection was very patchy at the time. It was very hard to even move around a single room and get the same network strength.

“We did it though. We finally built a remarkably stable engine that awes people from all over the world. The key is to never complain to the government, but to try to innovate while overcoming all the challenges that crop up. Trust me, if the end product survives the Indonesian environment, it will be successful in the international market,” Daniel said.

Daniel claims the engine will never falter. It is embedded with tracking technology and can be connected to any e-payment system. It can pin-point global positioning system coordinates and connect to the nervous system for science and health purposes.

The company recently created and launched the first augmented reality collectible Star Trek pins with a United States-based company called FanSets that makes sets of collectible pins.

Fans with these special Star Trek pins can use an application to make the pins come alive in three dimensions (3D), with sound effects and music.

The importance of filing for patents

WIR Group owns five global PCT (Patent Corporation Treaty) patents with regards to augmented reality covering 148 countries.

“No matter how hard it is or how complicated the process you have to go through to register for a patent, you just have to do it to protect your intellectual property (IP). This is very important,” he emphasised.

Daniel said that patent filing is one of the key factors in WIR Group’s international success. The patents give the company freedom in terms of licensing out their products and engines.

“I will never forget the painful two years we went through back then when filing for patents, but looking back, it had to be done, and we have never regretted it.”

The company is hoping to have at least one form of technology registered every year, Daniel said, adding that this is nothing compared to giants like Samsung which can file 10 to 12 patents every single day.

We are now in the middle of scaling up and we are hoping to have new investors coming in, so we can deploy more projects in Southeast Asia, as well as in our existing strong markets such as the United States and Europe.

“The future is about augmented reality. It’s about how you demolish spatial barriers and bring true experience to anyone, be it brands who want campaigns to reach their audience or the service industry that wants people to know and experience intangible products. The possibilities in augmented reality are endless,” he concluded.
 

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