Flipkart Acquires Augmented Reality Startup Scapic To Enhance Shopping Experience

Indian ecommerce giant Flipkart Group, on Tuesday (November 17), acquired 100% stake in augmented reality (AR) company Scapic to enhance its immersive shopping experience capabilities.

With this acquisition, Flipkart Group will onboard Scapic’s team of developers and designers. The team will work towards accelerating the ecommerce giant’s efforts to provide deeper camera experiences, virtual storefront and new opportunities for brand advertising on the platform.

Flipkart, in its press release, highlighted that it has been focusing on enhancing consumer experience through several investments, including strengthening technology capabilities. This is majorly to capitalise on the changes in consumer behaviour and increase online adoption due to the pandemic.

Speaking on the investment, Flipkart Group’s CEO Kalyan Krishnamurthy, said that Flipkart has focused on providing services that make shopping online a seamless and more enjoyable experience. As the company is diving deeper to develop and nurture the retail ecosystem, it is looking to make its platform easier to navigate and richer for consumers in terms of content and experience.

Meanwhile, Scapic’s cofounder V K Sai Krishna and Ajay P V, added that today we buy more online than ever and this behaviour has been accelerated this year and customers now require better visuals than ever before.

“Scapic is building visual technology that brings products to life using Augmented Reality and 3D. Advancements by the Scapic team in the field of AI, Computer Vision and AR have made this change possible. Scapic’s no-code platform helps create immersive experiences across categories such as fashion, furniture and electronics,” they added.

Founded in 2017, Bengaluru-based Scapic is a cloud-based platform that enables the creation and publishing of AR and 3D content, currently serving clients across ecommerce and marketing.

The company has been a part of Y Combinator’s Startup School, has also been one of the winners of the Karnataka Elevate 100 programme, and been listed as the top 120 startups at Wharton India Economic Forum. It had previously raised $500K seed funding from Axilor, Speciale Invest and Newfort Capital back in 2018.

Earlier this month, Flipkart acquired Bengaluru-based mobile gaming startup Mecha Mocha for an undisclosed valuation to strengthen its foray into the gaming segment. With this deal, Flipkart has acquired the Intellectual Property of Mecha Mocha and team.