As a versatile studio, Meraki uses Virtual Reality for diverse verticals that include entertainment, sports, films, news and documentaries. Sales has been our latest addition, where we have used VR to improve companies’ bottom lines significantly.

Over the years, India has earned a distinguished position as a reliable outsourcing destination for services as well as manufacturing. Following tradition, Indian companies display their strengths and capabilities by flying existing and prospective clients from across the world to their facilities. This involves considerable costs and valuable customer time, slowing down sales conversions as well as decision making.

This pain point has opened up a unique opportunity for Virtual Reality. The premise of VR has been to port people to places and let them ‘feel presence’. While the possibilities of VR have been exploited creatively by entertainment and marketing teams, sales teams are now finding practical uses for VR. The result is faster and better conversions for sales teams as well as considerable savings for companies.

Meraki partnered with HCL to create interactive VR walkthroughs of their facilities in South India. Today, their sales teams across the world use our VR application to allow prospective clients to virtually visit factory floors and navigate spaces using interactivity. The week long shoot at their facilities in crystal clear 4K ensured that the Virtual presence was life like. The VR experience also included the tools of conventional video such as interviews and infographics that helped HCL play up their strengths.

Meraki’s shooting team encountered curious Japanese visitors who were on an industrial visit of the facility. This could probably be the beginning of the end of such visits, thanks to VR.

The author is a VR director and Co-founder of Meraki.