Mahindra launches 'Bring the Showroom Home' for a 360 degree Virtual Showroom experience

Mahindra & Mahindra Ltd. (M&M Ltd.), part of the USD 19 billion Mahindra Group today announced an industry first initiative in the automotive retail space with the launch of its ‘Bring the Showroom Home’, a portable, mobile based, interactive Virtual Reality experience. This is a unique initiative wherein a customer would get a 360 degree, all-encompassing and immersive virtual showroom experience.

Screen Grab from the App

Bring the Showroom Home is part of a series of initiatives under Mahindra’s Digital Transformation Strategy. Through an immersive technology experience, the customer can co-create and identify his Mahindra vehicle with any specification, in the convenience and comfort of his home as well as involve his family in the decision making process.  ‘Bring the Showroom Home’ platform will have 3 salient features of Virtual showroom, Self-explore and Make my SUV which will enable customers to experience the vehicle of their choice, in its entirety.

Speaking at the launch of the initiative, Veejay Nakra, Chief of Sales & Marketing – Automotive Division, Mahindra & Mahindra Ltd.  said, “At Mahindra we have always been at the forefront of disruption with the customer at the epicenter. Hence we reimagined the whole customer purchase experience by embarking on a digital transformation journey for an end-to-end solution from the pre-purchase stage to the post purchase ownership phase. These include industry first initiatives such as SYOUV and With You Hamesha, in addition to our multiple tie-ups with portals for online booking of our vehicles. Now, we are ready to take this disruption to the next level by changing the way automotive retail is perceived in India. Bring the Showroom Home is one such industry first immersive experience.”

Mr. Nakra further added, “In India, where vehicle purchase decision is mostly influenced by the family, Bring the Showroom Home will get the showroom closer to our customers and their families. After all, we want to take customer experience to the next level through convenient, transparent and personalised services at every step.”

Pre-Purchase Stage: Redefining Auto Retail 

The Mahindra SYOUV platform fortifies Mahindra’s engagement in the pre-purchase phase by providing class leading customer experience. The Platform integrates the virtual world with the real world and is the core offering under the pre-purchase phase. We have also ensured a robust backend mechanism to ensure superlative customer experience. Key features of SYOUV platform are as follows :-

• Dealer Stock Availability: The user gets complete transparency of the stock at dealerships in his vicinity. In case a stock is not currently available, the user can view the estimated next availability date for the selected stock at a particular dealership of his/her choice.
• Collaborative Exploration (CE): Co-create your SUV with friends/family online

• Talk to Our Expert (TTE): Connect with a Mahindra expert either through chat, audio call or video call.
• Compare Cars: Compare your prospective Mahindra SUV with other market leading SUVs. A key feature of the platform is photo compare which is not available on other platforms.
• Finance & Insurance: The user gets to browse several finance and insurance options offered by leading banks and insurers. Basis their selection, they can request a quote from the bank or insurer.
• Test Drive – Anytime, Anywhere: The user has the option to browse available slots online and block a slot for test drive. He can also track the TD vehicle coming to his location through google maps.
• Book Your Customized SUV Online: The user can book an SUV online and also add accessories available for the selected variant. He also has the option of selecting a vehicle model, variant, colour as well as viewprices and available offers/schemes online.

In the next phase of SYOUV, we plan to include on-road price, online order tracking, deal maker and several other differentiating features. SYOUV is a one-stop destination for Mahindra in the pre-sales phase of the auto-purchase journey which promises three customer benefits – Transparent, Personalized and Convenient.

The Bring the Showroom Home platform will allow customers to research a new vehicle by enabling them to view the vehicle in a virtual showroom, in city or off-road environments. At the pre-purchase phase, it will feature a 360-degree voice assisted virtual reality (VR) experience powered by state-of-the-art Samsung VR Gears. All of these can be experienced from the comfort of the customer’s home without compelling him to visit the showroom.

Purchase Stage – Convenience of Online Booking

Mahindra has redefined automotive retail through multiple tie ups with key auto portals for sales of its automotive products, thereby providing customers with the convenience to book their vehicles anytime, anywhere. The company has tied up with Cardekho, Carwale, IBB, Car&Bike and M2ALL.

Under the digital initiatives for enabling sales, Mahindra has also installed tablets and kiosks across most of its dealer network. Meant to assist customers in making suitable buying decisions, these gadgets offer realistic visual depictions of Mahindra vehicles, with various options related to accessories, colours etc.

Post Purchase Stage – With You Hamesha 

The new generation With You Hamesha platform provides class-leading customer convenience in the ownership phase.

‘With you Hamesha’ (WYH) is Mahindra’s digital platform for its existing customers and aims to sustain their satisfaction levels by constantly offering various online services. The platform has undergone a complete digital transformation and offers a customized and convenient experience with a whole lot of transparency. WYH is a versatile platform that offers a range of services, including:

• Convenient Service Booking: Convenient service booking facility from anywhere as per required date and time slot (Like Book My Show), with a facility of creating own e-jobcard and get cost estimate (for scheduled services)

• Smart Notifications: Service reminders and RSA/extended warranty/PUC/Insurance renewal reminders
• Instant Chat: chat with our executives to address customer’s queries
• SOS: SOS button for raising assistance request with location capturing facility
• RM Video Call: Video call with the relationship manager to get updates on vehicle service and other queries (Available for XUV & Rexton)
• Online Payment: Online payment facility with all credit/debit card and wallets

In the next phase of WYH, we plan to include Driver tracking, Breakdown Van Tracking and Vehicle tracking in workshop and many differentiating features. We aim to redefine the future of auto retail by providing transparency, convenience and a personalized experience to our customers with our integrated digital offerings across the consumer lifecycle journey.

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5 incredibly innovative uses for Augmented Reality

If seeing is believing, ‘trying on’ seals the deal. Augmented reality or AR goes beyond VR in some key respects, enabling users to integrate real and virtual scenes — in effect, allowing us to try on products before we buy.

Here are some of the most innovative, cutting edge uses for AR technology apart from gaming that we are sure to amaze you.

Home Decor

One truly exciting application for AR and related technologies is to showcase large purchases like furniture that consumers often have trouble visualizing in their home. Asian augmented reality (AR) / virtual reality (VR) startup iStaging lets shoppers arrange furniture and appliances in their own living space. By integrating users’ own photos of their home with product images, the app gives buyers a concrete visualization of potential purchases.

interactive iStaging AR app

Enriching travel and tourism

Augmented reality can give travelers amazing new experiences. Travelers can also use AR to find information about historic events and significant buildings with Wikitude World Browser and Lonely Planet. There are even apps that bring AR out onto the hiking trails, giving users inspiring route guides and AR-enhanced topographic maps.

Wikitude World Browser is widely regarded as the king of all augmented reality browsers, and in a way, serves as a third eye of sorts. While using your smartphone’s camera in a given area, the virtual browser — along with more than 3,500 associated content providers — offers you just about any geographically-relevant information you may find valuable in your travels. Useful information is often presented in the form of Wikipedia articles detailing the hallmarks of a specific landmark, or directions to the nearest ATM location or five-star restaurant.

Education and training

Bridging the gap between the virtual and physical worlds, Augment changes the way we see, imagine, and learn about the world around us.

Augment an augmented reality (AR) app and platform enables students and teachers to visualize 3D models in the real environment, in real time, and at scale. Google Sky Map will give you the ability to identify everything in the night sky. Once installed, just point your phone upward when it’s reasonably dark and clear outside, and Google will point out all the different stars, constellations, and planets that are visible to your phone’s camera.

Shop without the hassle of changing

DressingRoom by Gap, help customers virtually “try on" clothing through a smartphone, Augmented Reality experience. This is how it works – shoppers choose a Gap style that they might be interested in purchasing. Next, they select one of five body types featured in the app so they can “try on" the piece of clothing from anywhere on a Google Tango-enabled device, and if they love it, they can buy it online.

Healthcare

Augmented reality in healthcare has wide reaching implications that will transform the medical sector; from providing real-time data and assistance during complicated surgical procedures, to supporting aftercare and administration, we’ve only begun to scratch the surface of Augmented Reality’s potential benefits to our health and well-being.

Smartphone AR apps today can help retrain the brains of patients suffering from chronic vertigo, help blind people ‘see’ the world around them by rendering 3D surroundings into an audio soundscape or help medical students crush their anatomy classes.

With so many different fields of innovation at their fingertips, it is no surprise that tech-savvy and design enthusiasts want their next smartphone to come equipped with the sophisticated hardware and incredible processing power that can unlock these immersive and exciting augmented reality experiences.

Google has notably been pushing AR/VR technologies with its latest Android OS. The most prominent introduction however, has been the ASUS ZenFone AR launch that took place at CES, 2017 earlier this year.

That’s not all, ASUS recently took to its Facebook and Twitter pages to post a hinting that the super smartphone is all set to launch in India. According to industry sources, the company is planning to launch a smartphone in mid - July.

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ASUS showcases world's first Tango Enabled and Daydream Ready phone Zenfone AR at CES 2017

ASUS Zenfone AR is also World's first 8 GB RAM phone.

ASUS today showcased its innovative products in CES 2017. ASUS displayed its first Dual Camera setup phone Zenfone3 Zoom and other devices, but the show stopper for the day was Zenfone AR. As you might have got it with the name AR has something to do with the Augmented Reality. The term which has picked up a lot more meaning by now than just a fun feature. So, ASUS Zenfone AR is the world's first Tango Enabled and Daydream Ready phone (The world's first Tango Enabled phone is Lenovo Phab 2 Pro). For those who are unaware of Google Tango project, it is a project by Google which enables you to combine objects from real world onto your phone screen and you can play around with it. The technology enables you to measure your surroundings, re-imagine your home with virtual furniture and so on.

ASUS Zenfone AR

Unlike Lenovo Phab 2 Pro , which comes with relatively inferior specifications for a device which is supposed to do power intensive tasks, Zenfone AR comes with promising hardware specifications and make this device more of a Flagship Tango smartphone. ASUS Zenfone AR runs on Snapdragon 821 SoC and packs in 5.7 inch , 2560x1440 QHD display. The phone also comes with 8 GB of RAM which is highest in a smartphone as of today. Though I am not a fan of massive RAM in smartphones when you don't actually need them but here it is absolutely required as Tango will need all the power you have packed in your smartphones. With that power you don't have to worry much about heating as the smartphone comes with an advanced Vapor Cooling system.

The smartphone comes with a Tricam setup at rear, which includes a 23 MP rear camera, one camera for motion sensing and another one for depth-sensing. The placement of these three cameras is also quite interesting and despite so much on board it does not cover most of the space at back (remember how Zenfone Zoom had a massive camera at back?).Unlike three-camera systems in other devices, the design of the ASUS TriCam system clusters its array of cameras to reduce their footprint within the phone, enabling the entire phone to be thinner and lighter.

ZenFone AR features a powerful Qualcomm Snapdragon 821 processor that is optimized for Tango, and is the world's first smartphone with 8GB of RAM. ZenFone AR's powerful performance and innovative camera work in conjunction with Tango to enable smooth and compelling smartphone AR experiences. A beautiful, 5.7-inch WQHD Super AMOLED display and a new five-magnet speaker makes Daydream VR apps, games, and videos more immersive and entertaining. Android 7.0 ‘Nougat’ lets users get the most out of ZenFone AR with new multitasking features and other enhancements that deliver a great mobile experience.

“The Snapdragon 821 processor is a perfect fit for a flagship Tango enabled device like the ZenFone AR,” said Amon. “You need a powerful heterogeneous computing and power-efficient chip to handle the intensive processing and complex features needed to optimize and deliver rich augmented reality experiences. We congratulate ASUS on this exciting new product and are excited to now have Snapdragon processors powering devices across their lineup.”

Also onstage to reveal more about ZenFone AR and Tango, as well as demonstrate some of the amazing augmented-reality experiences available through innovative mobile apps and games were Erik Hermanson, Head of Content & Brand Marketing at ASUS, and Johnny Lee, Director of Engineering for Tango. “Our phones already assist us in our day-to-day lives, but we believe they can do even more. We’re excited to see Tango technology incorporated into ZenFone AR, making its capabilities available to more people,” said Mr. Lee. Jeff Kirwan, Global President of Gap, then demonstrated DressingRoom by Gap, an augmented reality app that allows Gap customers to model clothes on a virtual mannequin and view it from any angle.

Following the announcements, ASUS hosted a demo area showcasing ZenFone AR, ZenFone 3 Zoom, and the latest lineup of lifestyle, business, and Republic of Gamers (ROG) gaming products. New lifestyle and business products include the ZenBook UX490 laptop, VivoPC X desktop PC, ProArt PA32U monitor, and ASUSPRO B9440 business laptop. New gaming products include the ROG Maximus IX Extreme motherboard, ROG Gladius II mouse, ROG GR8 II gaming PC, ROG Rapture GT-AC5300 router, and ROG Strix Magnus gaming microphone. Additionally, several desktop and laptop PCs updated with the latest 7th Generation (‘Kaby Lake’) Intel^® Core^™ processors were also shown, including the Zen AiO ZN270 desktop, ROG GT51CH gaming desktop, and the ROG GX800VH and G752 gaming laptops.

ASUS won eight CES 2017 Innovation Awards, with products across four competitive award categories honored for outstanding design and engineering innovation. The award-winning products include: ZenFone 3 Deluxe, Designo Curve MX34VQ, Vivo AiO V221, ZenBook 3, ROG GX800, ROG Maximus IX Apex and ROG Maximus IX Hero, and an upcoming powerful ROG gaming laptop.

All ASUS and ROG products will be on display at the ASUS Media Suite at the Trump International Hotel in Las Vegas, from 4:00pm–6:00pm on January 4th, 2017, and from 9:00am-6:00pm on 5th-7th January, 2017.

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