Empower Labs gives India a taste of AR

Delta T (the game) will launch by December 2016. And by 2017, the founders are aiming at 2.5 million downloads with about 500,000 active users at the global level.

India has just woken up to the concept of augmented realitybased games after the rippling effect of Pokémon Go. But, few youngsters here in India had already ventured into the making of an augmented reality gaming company much before Pokémon Go woke up to the craze. Krishna Milan Rao, a young 24-year-old, Hyderabad-based entrepreneur, has created a gaming company called Empower Labs to give people their first taste of Augmented Reality (AR) in India. “I have always been a passionate advocate of Augmented Reality and I believe that it is the ecosystem of the future. I was especially intrigued by the mass potential of the technology which I felt was not being exploited.”

It all began at Rao’s academic days at Purdue University pursuing a major in Industrial Engineering and a minor in Entrepreneurship and Innovation, where the focus of most ventures in the Augmented Reality (AR) space were into developing devices, wearables and headsets. However, he felt that the technology did not solve the major problem that any ecosystem faces in terms of user adoption and lack of engaging content. “Instead of portraying AR as a far-fetched technology, I wanted people to experience AR now! I wanted to bring immersive experiences on everyday devices.”

With Empower Labs, Rao aims to bring a stark contrast in his gaming application from other popular ones among youngsters. AR, he believes, allows developers to bring gaming into the real world and increase social-interaction amongst gamers. “We promote socializing, travel, and physical movement through the game in a stark contrast to how ‘gaming’ is usually perceived. We wanted to deliver AR content to the audience in a package that they are comfortable with, one that requires minimal investment, and one that is most exciting for the users. Gaming allows us to tap into an audience of early adopters and promote maximum engagement with content,” reveals Rao.

Once Rao was confident about AR as his technology of choice for his company, he reached out to Karthik Isola, a close friend and a young entrepreneur also based out of Hyderabad, and Nelvin Joseph through a mutual connection. Nelvin