Head-on with Pokémon Go, Empower Labs augments reality gaming in India

By Anusha Ashwin India has just woken up to the concept of augmented reality-based games after the rippling effect of Pokémon Go. But, few youngsters here in India had already ventured into the making of an augmented reality gaming company much before Pokémon Go woke up to the craze.

Krishna Milan Rao, a young 24-year-old, Hyderabad-based entrepreneur, has created a gaming company called Empower Labs to give people their first taste of Augmented Reality (AR) in India. “I have always been a passionate advocate of Augmented Reality and I believe that it is the ecosystem of the future. I was especially intrigued by the mass potential of the technology which I felt was not being exploited.”

It all began at Rao’s academic days at Purdue University pursuing a major in Industrial Engineering and a minor in Entrepreneurship and Innovation, where the focus of most ventures in the Augmented Reality (AR) space were into developing devices, wearables and headsets. However, he felt that the technology did not solve the major problem that any ecosystem faces in terms of user adoption and lack of engaging content. “Instead of portraying AR as a far-fetched technology, I wanted people to experience AR now! I wanted to bring immersive experiences on everyday devices.”

With Empower Labs, Rao aims to bring a stark contrast in his gaming application from other popular ones among youngsters. AR, he believes, allows developers to bring gaming into the real world and increase social-interaction amongst gamers. “We promote socializing, travel, and physical movement through the game in a stark contrast to how ‘gaming’ is usually perceived. We wanted to deliver AR content to the audience in a package that they are comfortable with, one that requires minimal investment, and one that is most exciting for the users. Gaming allows us to tap into an audience of early adopters and promote maximum engagement with content,” reveals Rao.

Once Rao was confident about AR as his technology of choice for his company, he reached out to Karthik Isola, a close friend and a young entrepreneur also based out of Hyderabad, and Nelvin Joseph through a mutual connection. Nelvin Joseph is an entrepreneur who earlier built Artin Dynamics, a start-up that exploited Artificial Intelligence. Finally, in February 2015, the vision materialized into incorporating Empower Labs with the sole objective of bringing AR to the masses. While, Isola oversees all the operations at Empower Labs, Joseph heads the technical operations.

Augmenting Delta T

Raising an investment of Rs 3 crore from private investors, Rao and his co-founders started the process of developing ‘Delta T’. Defining Delta T is easy, but the experience of developing it is comparable to a Hollywood movie making. Delta T is an Augmented Reality Mobile MMORPG played over a layer of interactive maps. MMORPG is the abbreviation for Massive Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Games. It is a real time location-based strategy game. The game acts as a social catalyst and promotes travel, socializing and interaction. It gives audiences a chance to experience AR in the most affordable and familiar format as a ‘free-to-play’ app. The game is based on an in-depth backstory set in the future in which the world is plagued by imminent extinction and altering the past. Each Megacorp in the game believes that they hold the key to avert the apocalypse but only one can prevail. The players choose a Megacorp in line with their ideology and fight for global supremacy endowed with the latest weaponry from the future.

“To many, games are an escape from the humdrum of everyday life. But with DeltaT, it is a retreat from the real world. People get a chance to experience AR, which is usually experienced only at tech conferences and gaming conventions. This leads to a feeling that AR is a technology of the future and not of today. It also raises the misconception that AR experiences cost a premium and are unaffordable. Our product ‘Delta T’ brings the experience of AR to billions of smartphone users across the world as an accessible app that is ‘free-to-play’,” remarks Rao.

Delta T essentially combines two huge markets — Entertainment and Networking — by providing a platform for gamers to interact and play in the real world. The dynamic battlefield is another key aspect that differentiates the game from others. Every time a player logs in from a different location they play on a different map with a new set of rivals.

Currently, the game is in the development stage with plans for the beta launch in three countries i.e., India, Singapore and New Zealand, by August 2016 and in Canada and Finland by October 2016. After incorporating changes based on feedback, it will be launched globally by December 2016. Gamers can sign up for a private beta now at http://www.deltatgame.com/.

“The fact that ‘Delta T’ offers people their first taste of AR is something that has drawn global interest in the game. The in-depth backstory based on timelines and a dystopian future allowed us a lot of scope to experiment and put out some really engaging content,” says Rao about DeltaT.

For the game’s visual creatives, Rao and his team have partnered with the creative team of internationally acclaimed movie Baahubali. The creative team is headed by S S Karthikeya (Director of Baahubali Rajamouli’s son). The teaser of ‘Delta T’ went viral on YouTube with close to 4 million views and has received coverage from global media like Huffington Post, Closer, Daily Mail UK, and many others. The upcoming trailer video was recently shot in Bangkok and is awaiting release. “This would be the pre-quel to the teaser that went viral, so we would be able to cash in on the hype generated by the teaser’s virality and media coverage,” excitedly comments Rao.

The biggest competition for Delta T includes Ingress, the first successful AR MMO, and Pokémon Go, both published by Niantic Labs. Niantic Inc, an American software development company based in San Francisco, California, is best known for developing and publishing the augmented reality mobile games Ingress and Pokémon Go.

With an in-depth knowledge in Augmented Reality, Rao certainly does not want to stop with just developing games. “AR is an ecosystem that can change the way we interact with technology. It has applications across content, e-commerce, medicine, education and others and is poised to be a $120 billion industry on its own. AR-based brand placement is another stream of revenue we are exploring. Strategic brand placements and interactions with them can be incorporated as part of the gameplay. We are also looking at merchandising in the form of badges, prints, comics, apparel designed especially for gamers,” reveals Rao.

Not denying the challenges in AR’s adoption, Rao says, “It is a new concept for a lot of people. The stickiness of the concept is something that we are really working on. We are looking at large scale global as well as local events to build and drive the community. We will also reach out to top ranking players and give them real life game badges.”

The game will launch globally by December 2016. Rao predicts that by 2017, DeltaT would be able to drive about 2.5 million downloads globally with about 500,000 active users. Empower Labs, headed by Rao will soon look at localizing their content for non-English speaking markets such as China, Japan and South Korea that houses huge gaming populations. “We are now a team of 23-Empowerers and are looking to expand to a team of 50 by the end of 2017. We are on the lookout for Series A funding to help us in scaling the game and market it on a global level,” says Krishna Milan Rao.