Avataar raises $45 million to improve consumer shopping experience with life-sized 3D product evaluation –

The startup currently works with a number of firms, including the top two e-commerce marketplaces across furniture, large appliances and other categories, said Sravanth Aluru, founder and chief executive of Avataar, in an interview with TechCrunch. In a demo, Aluru dragged and dropped several products — couches and desks — to his living room from a partner e-commerce marketplace’s app and changed the color and the SKUs without having to reposition the virtual items in the house. For consumers, too, if they are using an iPhone or an Android smartphone launched in recent years, there’s a good chance that their phone has the computational and graphical power to support viewing and interaction with virtual objects, he said. Avataar.me is leading the way in bringing scale creation capabilities to the largest brands to enable commerce — an application with tremendous promise in AR/VR environments,” said Shailesh Lakhani, managing director at Sequoia India, in a statement. “The platform will transform the consumer shopping experience at home on their mobile devices, through AR glasses/wearables, or even in a physical store exploring an infinite aisle of a digitally enabled catalogue.” Evan Feinberg, partner at Tiger Global, said in a statement: “Consumers continue to look for a better eCommerce experience, and the innovative technology created by Avataar provides a powerful plug and play solution for its customers to meet this demand.