Meta Unveils New Program and Fund to Foster XR Ecosystem Development in India
Meta has unveiled its new Mixed Reality program in India, featuring a grant of USD 250K for Indian startups and developers to create applications and experiences utilizing Meta’s Presence Platform. This platform encompasses a wide range of machine perception and AI capabilities for the Meta Quest Platform and, ultimately, the Metaverse. The aim of the fund is to nurture innovation and cultivate an ecosystem of XR technologies within the country.
Under this initiative, a select group of up to five Indian developers and startups will receive a financial grant along with dedicated mentorship and guidance from Meta Reality Labs experts. They will also have the opportunity to upload their products to Quest App Lab and become part of Meta’s expanding developer ecosystem. Additionally, the chosen startups will receive an introduction to prominent local venture capital funds upon completion of the program.
Sandhya Devanathan, Vice President for Meta in India, stated, “With India poised to have the world’s largest developer base by 2024, there is a strong need to foster innovation and emerging technologies in the country. Meta is committed to building the XR ecosystem in India. The Presence Platform is a crucial component of the metaverse vision, aiming to make virtual experiences more tangible and accessible. We believe that this fund and program will accelerate the creation and adoption of VR and MR experiences in the country and provide Indian developers an opportunity to showcase their innovations on a global scale.”
To enable the creation of immersive mixed reality environments, Meta has been enhancing the representation of motion and space within applications. The Presence Platform offers a suite of capabilities that allow developers to seamlessly blend virtual content with the physical world, resulting in compelling Mixed Reality experiences. These capabilities are already integrated into some of the most popular apps on Quest, and developers worldwide are actively leveraging the Presence Platform.
The fund is now accepting applications from both established and emerging startups and developers, inviting them to explore the capabilities offered by the Presence Platform. Over the next few months, Meta will select up to five companies to participate in the program and receive the grant.
This program is open to developers and companies of all sizes across India. Individual developers must be at least 18 years old at the time of proposal submission. The selected developers will be required to integrate the Presence Platform into new or existing Meta Quest apps using features such as Passthrough, Scene Understanding, Spatial Anchors, Shared Spatial Anchors, Voice SDK, Text to Speech, Interaction SDK for Hand Tracking, and Social Presence APIs
