- Adopters of 3D data options, be it VR/AR is going to be corporates undergoing change
- Believes that 5G impact will be ‘absolutely fantastic’ for development of 3D data options
Speak with Muhammad Zamir Rashid about Innoveam Sdn Bhd and he takes pains to drive house one key point. Plus it’s not about the undeniable fact that he has a Fortune 500 client in Malaysia, or one of Indonesia’s largest companies, or even that a global gas and oil major are one of the clients for his 3D data expert company. Rather it is the fact that his is an engineering driven firm that delivers 3D data solutions.
“Our special selling point, our differentiator in the market is that we have been an engineering concentrated company that happens to build up AR or VR applications for our clients. ” What this means is that will, whether the client is certainly coming from the marine sector, oil & gasoline, power generation or manufacturing sector, “as engineers, we realize their domains which allows us to create the necessary VR and AR applications which can satisfy their needs, solve their pain points, reduce their costs and improve efficiencies, ” he says.
This market placing dovetails with Zamir’s belief that the early adopters of 3D data solutions, whether it is through virtual reality (VR) format or increased reality (AR) with multiplayer capability are going to be large corporate players undergoing their digital transformation.
When Zamir discusses multiplayer, it is not in the gaming sense but rather about when several person can join a virtual environment and collaborate.
[Ed note: The writer put on a Holo Lens during a recent visit to Innoveam’s office and experienced a medical application where, with his hands, was able to zoom, pinch, expand, turn and poke a digital replica of the human heart. And while both writer and Zamir were in the same room, proximity does not matter in the virtual world. They could have been on opposite poles. But, as long as they had connectivity and the right VR gear, they could be in the same space discussing the heart. “A super cool experience,” said Karamjit.]
To Zamir it is not about regardless of whether VR or AR is the right approach to take for a business. “It is more about getting the right digital modification strategy, starting from information collection to information storage, to information analytics and information visualization, and then, creating the right human machine interface in a collaborative metaverse, ” he says. This whole platform would be the right method and will be the only way, actually, he boldly forecasts by which companies can improve their operations.
While the buzz around the metaverse as being a platform business may use is starting to grab, for Zamir, that built his very first client multiplayer virtual environment in 2014, it is about setting to serve clients when they are ready to react.
And having had a ring side seat to corporate Malaysia’s tepid receptiveness to AV/VR since 2014, Zamir acted in 2019. After years of looking to convince slow relocating local companies to consider VR/AR into their functions, he decided it was time to raise some capital and broaden overseas. Make that will, further expand abroad, because he was already within Indonesia.
In response to the downturn in the oil and gas marketplace in 2015, he either had to let people go or even make some other call. Wanting to repay the loyalty of his early employees whenever he launched Innoveam with four Media University VR graduates, all Indonesians, Zamir decided to send all of them home to start his Indonesian subsidiary in Jakarta.
This decision saw the anatomist and technical team remaining in Malaysia while his articles development team returned to Indonesia. “Since the creative group was based in Indonesia, we decided to focus on less technical solutions to offer to the marketplace and ended up selecting tourism, ” said Zamir. And today, he claims that PT Innoveam Indonesia has the biggest market share for art gallery digitization in the country. Also, they are in some theme parks.
Yet Zamir want’s happy with the company’s development. “In 2018, I thought, we can’t be sustainable and required a fresh injection associated with funds rather than keep relying on cash flow. ”
Using on their track record in Indonesia and Malaysia, with ambitions to expand to Singapore and Thailand, Zamir[AMN1] pitched to Malaysian Technologies Development Corporation (MTDC) and in late 2019 received a few mil ringgit funding through the Business Startup Finance or BSF that will MTDC has been operating for over a decade.
The financing capped a sweet end to 2019 which proved to be Innoveam’s best year. Boosted by the funds earlier 2020 saw them lease new work place in a 5-star area with the lease activated on 1st March 2020. And then the planet stopped for Zamir on March 18.
“A spanner in the works, ” is Zamir’s mild description from the impact of that 1st Covid lockdown. The numerous shutdowns and worldwide travel restrictions have already been the biggest challenge of his life, he admits.
With the pandemic as being a boon to a lot of tech businesses, it seemed strange that Zamir’s expertise within creating virtual realms did not receive a lift too. But as he explains it, to produce a virtual world is just not cheap and not quick.
You need to spend on the content material, on hardware and, on the platform. Yet no one wanted to invest, not when you got low cost solutions such as Meets, Teams, Zoom. “So it wasn’t really boon period for us, ” he admits that. Compounding this was the truth that the oil and gas market which was one of Innoveam’s primary market was also badly affected, especially in 2020 and 2021.
“We were significantly impacted over the past two years. It is often very tough, ” Zamir admits. Even worse, the funding obtained from MTDC, instead to grow the business, needed to be used to minimize the hit their business took from the outbreak.
Thankfully for Zamir, along with over two decades associated with helping tech business owners MTDC understood the particular predicament Innoveam is at and the two parties renegotiated, expectations, breakthrough and other targets. “And now I have a lot more breathing space, ” says a grateful Zamir. “They realized my condition and also have been very helpful within opening doors plus opportunities. ”
Looking forward, Zamir is excited, pointing to just how IoT, sensors, impair computing, AI machine learning are becoming mature technologies in the corporate world and with the additional impact of 5G to come.
Describing its effect as “absolutely awesome, ” Zamir says, “I can’t wait for 5G implementation within Malaysia. ” He could be confident that Inoveam is in the right position to deliver virtual reality conditions that allow business and people to work together.