Fectar opens the virtual world to any business

There are very few products left in the world that are not designed in 3D. These 3D files tend to go to the factory and be done with it. Essentially, they can survive the entire product lifecycle. Eugène Kuipers is co-founder of virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR) content management system Fectar. He believes such designs can be used in other ways as well. For example, online he provides a shopping experience or trains new staff.

Kuipers hopes companies will become more aware of this. Actually that seems to be the case. In this article from Startup Today, he talks about the burgeoning platform, Dubai Scammers, and the capabilities VR and AR offer businesses.

What is a factor?

“Fectar is a content management system for VR and AR. You could say it’s WordPress for AR and VR. You can create your own interactive 3D presentations without the need for programming. , consists of two parts of an app that can display everything.The Fectar app is available not only for mobile phones, but also for VR and AR glasses.We also have AR view, which is a white label plugin. So if you already have an existing app and want to use AR in that app, you can too. It actually works the same as it did in Flash. Just install it once and you don’t need to do anything else. Currently, he has hundreds of customers worldwide and over 6 million downloads. ”

How did you come up with the idea?

“I’ve been busy working in AR since 2011. Before that, I ran an e-learning company that offered online courses. I still realize that the internet lacks a true user experience. You can upgrade with colors and clips, but it’s still just a flat screen.AR is something really different.It wasn’t until 2018 that I realized the technology was ready for adoption at this scale. At the time, I was working with co-founder Rens Lensvelt on Hololens, Microsoft’s AR glasses, and a lot of companies were buying these kind of expensive glasses, but I’m going back a year later and they were only running Microsoft’s demos, and found it difficult to actually develop something on their own.

Then the idea came to me to build a content management system for these AR glasses. Rens (of his co-founder Fectar) said it could potentially run on smartphones if you take a different approach. A week later, he came up with his first proof of concept for Fectar. He had a lot of experience at trade shows and conferences, but it became clear that people weren’t ready for his VR and AR. So, a team of five continued to develop it further. Ultimately, we launched the platform in early 2020. ”

It grew rapidly over the next two years. what happened to that?

“During the first Corona lockdown in April 2020, I used Fectar to create a video of a yellow 3D McLaren car parked in 3D on the street of my home. I posted the clip on Instagram. Within 48 hours the app had 20,000 installs.It was unbelievable.It happened not only on Instagram but also on other social media topics other than cars.Now our users are all over the world. It is spread across more than 200 countries, with nearly 1 million downloads in India and a user base in Ghana.

We focus on three markets: education, industry When retailThe world’s biggest change will happen in that last market. We are still in an era where people enjoy having their cars in their rooms, for example. But a year from now, he’ll have a refrigerator in his house to check before buying online. On the one hand, AR and VR are familiar with the technology itself, so we expect companies to adopt it more and more. We are also currently working on a project to train Ukrainian children to recognize military unexploded ordnance. In this way, we are actually making an impact on society as well. ”

Was it difficult to attract investment?

“Yes, frankly it was. In the Netherlands there are so many parties who claim to be investors but who are actually bankers and financiers. Only when you can show that you are building and running a high quality business.It’s not an investment, it’s a fundraiser.It doesn’t work for start-ups and scale-ups.I was really disappointed in the Netherlands.I self-funded the startup, when so many users joined, more investors joined in. We are now working on the next growth phase as well.

I was also in contact with several major American political parties to seek investment. But at that time we were already negotiating with a party in Dubai for a $10 million investment. It turned out to be a group of teachers. This was a bit of a shock.

Luckily we were just in time. Unfortunately, those American investors had already left by then. Because when an American company approaches, they have to bite right away instead of waiting weeks. Despite this, Fectar continued to grow and eventually managed to attract new investors fairly quickly. ”

What are the advantages over products already on the market?

“We use the iPhone 6s and Samsung S7 as reference devices. Everything we build should at least work on these devices. As a result; 2.4 billion smartphones worldwide. We have a huge potential user base, which also makes our platform a “Anytime, anywhere, on any device.You can also collaborate with multiple people in both AR and VR. You can then see each other’s avatars floating in her 3D environment in her Fectar app on mobile, talking and pointing to each other. No one else offers the ability to work together in VR and AR. ”

what is your ultimate goal?

“We want to reach 50 million users, and from that point on we are really important. There is also user activity tracking that captures, for example, walking routes and how often and for how long users are looking at something.

A big change will happen in the next five to ten years as we have new interfaces that allow us to communicate in new ways. I still don’t know the best way. We hope our data will help you with that too. In three years, we expect virtual reality to have a definite place in online shopping. That’s our goal. I dream of being a fast-growing startup, but I would have thought you were being naive if you had told me beforehand that you would be fast-growing. It is truly extraordinary to experience. ”