Would you like to teleport into your dream home? Then walk into the Easy Build showroom at Great India Place mall in Noida, put on the Oculus Quest 2 VR headsets, and choose the wall colours for your living room, the tiles for your kitchen or the high-end fittings for your bathroom. Even get a feel of the tile textures — glossy or matte — with the help of Haptic feedback via simulated tactile experiences. Do you think the false ceiling is a little too low? Well, just raise it a few inches with the hand tracking tool. Still not sure? Take the help of the AI assistant to compare between brands. And once you are done, put it all in the virtual shopping cart and click on the payment link. Within days, all of the material will be shipped to the project site, along with recommendations for installation and even the plumbers, carpenters and masons.
Welcome to the world of metaverse shopping! From exploring roomscapes to collaborating with architects, interior designers and family members sitting in another city, the possibilities are endless at the Easy Build Metaverse Commerce Enabled Experience Centre, as chief technology officer Pranab Das puts it. “A confluence of Metaverse technology, e-commerce and logistics
Technology takes over at every stage to make it an enriching phygital experience. There’s the Naked Eye 3D Experience – a portable holographic display that uses LED fan technology to create holographic images and videos without the need for glasses or other viewing aids. Not only does it catch the attention of the customer but allows her to see the finer details as well as how it works in the real world. Meta bikes and Meta vans at the centre identify construction sites in each cluster from data collected from satellite imaging, local bodies and retailers. The vans / bikes visit these to assess the value of these sites in context of Easy Build’s business, market to the person of interest at the site and track the business converted from the specific site. This Meta van/bike based demand generation is likely to give it a high two-digit conversion, says Das.
Vishal Kanodia, founder and managing director of Easy Build, and head of Kanodia Group, a leading UP-based cement manufacturer, says it plans to have 50-60 metaverse experience centres in Delhi, Uttar Pradesh and Bihar by March 2024. “Each centre will showcase the technology, products, solutions and network of dealers across structural (cement, steel, brick, etc), intermediate (tiles, wood, hardware, electrical and plumbing) and finishing material categories (paints, sanitary and chrome plated fittings, lights and switches, kitchen fittings, safety and security,” he says. Around 73 brands including ACC
Typically, a humongous online platform sells products to the end-consumer at a discount as it is able to cut out the middlemen. But that also spells disaster for the retailer, stockist, distributor and others in the supply chain. Kanodia says the Easy Build platform brings the resellers on board while reducing the inventory stocking cost and transport cost, thus passing on the savings to the end-customer while not taking away business from the reseller.
“While we are targeting the retail customer, we are also bringing on board big builders. Via the Metaverse experience centre, their customers can choose the final look of their apartment allowing the builder to deliver customised interiors within broader parameters at the first instance itself. This would reduce delivery timelines for builders as well cut costs for customers who do not need to renovate on getting possession of their homes,” he adds.
The Noida experience centre has booked orders worth Rs 517 crore in the pre-launch week. The building material market in India