Finding a specific item online is a matter of a simple search, but attempting to do the same in a supermarket can easily turn out to be a difficult and time-consuming endeavor, especially if you’re not a regular customer.
A London-based company called Dent Reality wants to augment our shopping experiences with its augmented reality platform to provide turn-by-turn directions and other useful information.
Co-founded by Andrew Hart, a location-based AR pioneer responsible for the most popular project for Apple’s AR platform, and Ben Rosenbaum, a seasoned strategy and operations expert, the company is working with some of the world’s largest grocery retailers to bring its product to customers.
By making it easier for customers to find what they’re looking for while delivering the same contextual recommendations modern shopping websites do, retailers can improve their customer experience, increase loyalty, and drive revenue.
Recently, Dent Reality has secured approximately $3.4 million in a funding round led by Pi Labs, with participation from Europe’s Sugar Capital, and Silicon Valley’s 7Percent Ventures. The funding round was also joined by several angel investors, including Paul Forster and Rony Kahan, Indeed.com co-founders, and Matt Hackett, former VP of Engineering at Tumblr, among others.
According to the co-founders of Dent Reality, the funding will be used to improve the product and expand its reach. I
“Our vision is that every physical space will become digitally connected, enabling an entirely new type of interaction with the world around us,” said CEO and co-founder Andrew Dent. “We decided on grocery stores, because it’s the hardest challenge that we could have solved,” added Andrew Hart.
In the future, Dent Reality could be used in airports, campuses, hospitals, and most other physical spaces that can be hard to navigate.
