APAC CIO Outlook
HART RXR
The Problem-Solving Experts
A mid a wholly unexpected technology revolution that businesses are witnessing, this quote is a reminder that technological solutions alone cannot bring value. Most enterprises aren’t sufficiently rigorous in identifying and defining the problems they aim to solve by adapting to recent technology advances. What such organizations require is a research-proven methodology to find and understand the real problem, business case, and value, and then build a solution or a product with technology as an enabler. While this is easier said than done, knowledgeable problem-solvers, evidently, are hard to find.
However, companies like HART RXR are changing this narrative. Founded by Ankur Talwar with a singular focus on problem-solving with regards to the speed and cost of delivery of technology solutions, HART RXR empowers organizations with technology that solves real problems. In doing so, the company harnesses the transformative potential of Augmented Reality (AR) and Data Intelligence. “At HART RXR, we believe that if you approach an industry or a problem from the perspective of the challenges and the ways to fix those problems, irrespective of the technologies, you come up with a better solution,” says Talwar, founder and CEO of the company.
Although AR is still in a nascent stage, it undeniably leads the way to limitless visual possibilities with the realm of science fiction becoming a reality. However, riding the well-recognized virtual reality (VR) ’s coattails has made AR difficult for enterprises to understand and differentiate from VR’s value proposition, widening the knowledge gap in the market. Being long on promises and short on delivery, the AR industry as a whole is facing tremendous challenges—the biggest of them being the lack of enhanced hardware providers. As such, the glass manufacturers keep folding and going bankrupt, leaving the industry with minimal options like Microsoft HoloLens as the true immersive smart glass. Furthermore, just the hardware and no content for the end-user to consume is all for naught without apps and programs to enhance the utility and user experience of HoloLens and other AR devices; consumers will not be persuaded to adopt the technology of AR.
This is precisely what HART RXR intends to change. With the goal to expose the customers to the wide-reaching applications of AR, this Australia-based company starts with educating them on the difference between AR and VR through real-life demonstrations and through its product range fits the technology to the specific problem for the particular customer and exhibits how the problem is solved, and value is provided to that enterprise. On that front, the end customers and enterprises no more have to do the required research to find the problem, business case and further spend time analyzing whether or not it’s a good fit for the broader adoption. “We specialize in bridging the knowledge gaps, taking the customers on the AR journey, and educating them along the way, besides ensuring that our platform is compatible with the latest emerging technologies,” informs Talwar.
Having spent two decades of his life architecting complex technology solutions across four different continents and for some of the largest organizations of the world, dealing with multidimensional products, ranging from ERP to e-commerce to an award-winning cricket bat, Talwar has amassed significant experience in this realm. HART RXR’s genesis was a natural progression to advance his resolve to “add new dimensions to customers’ lives.” “I was driven to go back to my entrepreneurial roots and make the leap for launching something bigger and better than anything I had done before from the perspective that it could reach more people, more enterprises, more countries, and solve bigger problems, and moreover, I thought the timing was right,” he adds.
HART RXR deals with aspects of security, robustness, and scalability by building products that can be integrated into an enterprise’s complex existing landscape in MRO, telecom, and other non-traditional industries like agriculture and education. With ATOM, a simple, smart glass-based AR solution, the company aims to assist enterprises in delivering greater operational efficiencies, improved profitability, and higher customer satisfaction. Added to that, HART RXR leverages the innovative capabilities of AR in building solutions that deliver actionable information and expert assistance to enterprises’ workforce and customers in real-time. In the education sector, HART RXR brings about the academic excellence of kids by making technology available to them. The company’s Immerse solution can be seamlessly integrated with any operating system or hardware environment be it hand-helds, laptops or HMDs, and cultivates curiosity and memory retention, and stands by the global go-green concept with its successful reduction in paper usage. HART RXR’s smart glass-based AR solution FARMAR for the agricultural sector is designed with the singular purpose of saving farmers a lot of valuable resources by notifying them of the climatic or earth conditions, crop productivity, or prediction of a particular animal, just by walking through the field, once we have refined our computer vision technology to the extent that rural internet connectivity is not an issue.
HART RXR’s products are adaptable to any technology landscape, offering integratability and interoperability, even when applied to multiple devices and operating systems. “While all AR solution providers are in a rush to enter the market even with a single-dimensional view, we put in the hard yards, spending significant time on getting the product out, to make sure we do it right,” says Talwar. He goes on to highlight an instance where HART RXR helped a manufacturer facing the most prevalent problem of NOC or support operations, optimization, and connection into the actual machine data. HART RXR’s AR solution helped the manufacturer not only educate the end-user in real-time on maintaining the machines on their own but also provided manufacturer valuable access to the machine usage data. While all that the customer wanted was an AR-enabled instruction manual, HART RXR through their ATOM product ended up providing them with a lot more with data insights useful in informing manufacturer’s future marketing and product strategies.
“At HART RXR, we believe that if you approach an industry or a problem from the perspective of the challenges and the ways to fix those problems, irrespective of the technologies, you come up with a better solution”
“As data presented in a spatial form, AR is ubiquitous with the power to revolutionize the world and everything that we see around,” explains Talwar. “While experts of AR rightly tend to go into the future before the world does, the broader market views AR from a perspective of today or back in time so that they can adopt the technology and I guess that’s where the challenge lies. We still need to fully figure out how to make the technology work in the current landscape of organizations seamlessly before harnessing its full power.” HART RXR is already virtualizing education labs and plans to foray into the advertising space. Likely within the next year, the company will expand its solution to the rest of Asia, the US and Europe, successfully positioning AR as the channel to communicate data.
