‘5G is not here to watch videos but to do some heavy lifting on computing’

Unleashing the power of holograms, the 5G era is ushering in a new wave of transformative marketing experiences. Brands can now create immersive and life-like holographic presentations, engaging customers in unprecedented ways with the high-speed connectivity of 5G. A fireside chat on the topic ‘Unleashing the power of Holograms’ at the recently held Techmanch Conference in Mumbai delved deeper into the field. The session chair of the fireside chat was Niraj Ruparel, Head of Mobile & Emerging Tech, GroupM. Ruparel was in conversation with Sunita Bangard, Group Head- Consumer Insights and Brand Development, Aditya Birla Group; Nasyam Parveez, Founder, Immersionx Technologies; and Amit Doshi, CMO, Britannia Industries Limited, virtually who appeared as a hologram on the stage.

Ruparel opened the chat by setting the context for the conversation about holograms and holobox. “5G is not here to watch videos, 5G is here to do some heavy lifting on computing. It is going to be a transformational highway that the government and the telecom operators are laying down for India, and on that highway, you need super sci-fi solutions,” said Ruparel

Sharing her thoughts on how technology like 5G can be used for Aditya Birla Group that has a plethora of brands, Bangard said “Something that comes in my head as a real use case would be in our fashion category. We have a whole host of designers with us like Sabyasachi, Tarun Tahiliani, Masaba Gupta and Shantanu & Nikhil, and I can think of certain money-can’t-buy experiences where people would like to have a one-on-one consultation with these designers.”

Next up, from the Bangalore studio of WPP, Ruparel got Amit Doshi of Britannia on stage virtually through the holobox. Doshi talked about how 5G would transform India, saying, “Look at how 5G is making data and AI - which is already so potent and pervasive - more effective. What does this really mean at the grassroots level?... you can beat the dimension of distance and the dimension of time. If there are experiences that brands need to create on the fly and in a short duration of time, this could be really effective. Also, with something like this, a brand representative can be at so many places at the same time.”

Nasyam Parveez, founder of this technology, then joined the conversation and shed some light on how traditional hologram has been the foundation of the holobox. He said, “Traditionally, holograms have been used in very confined spaces for more than a century. However, there was a challenge with holograms because they had to be done in closed environments, in the dark. Also, it used to take 48 hours just to set up these holograms in place and it was very expensive. But today, we have this product which is very portable, can go anywhere, can be set up in 15-20 minutes. We want it to go more into masses - in terms of retail stores, town halls, conferences and as virtual assistants in public spaces.”

The holographic beam box is enabled with 5G and hence there is low latency which makes it possible to stream anyone, he said.

Ruparel further talked about another product innovation coming up on this front which is a browser-enabled hologram and gave a live demo of the browser-enabled hologram at the conference where the audience could scan a QR code and experience a live hologram of Ruparel talk to them through their mobile phones.

Click to watch the full session - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CALhru1vBI4