Faizaan Ghauri is the CEO at WRLD, a technology company whose mission is to create an immersive three-dimensional world to visualize and interact with all things on the planet. Faizaan, whose career lies on the intersection of gaming and enterprise, has been a leader in introducing Pakistan to Virtual Reality and Augmented Reality, especially with the creation of Hackathons known as the Throwathon. At WRLD, he has led the developer community and worked with some of the most popular global brands to help merge real-time and digital worlds. A tech evangelist, Faizaan is part of steering committee of Nspire, which is an incubator focused on promoting disruptive Pakistani startups abroad. He has an MBA from UCLA Anderson and a BA from Wesleyan University.

In this interview with the WRLD CEO, BR Research asked the expert about the economic value and use-cases of Virtual and Augmented Reality-based applications in Pakistan, prospects for remote working post-pandemic, and the main use-cases of Internet of Things for Pakistan’s urban areas. Selected excerpts are produced below:

BR Research: Let’s start the interview with your apparent area of expertise: Virtual Reality and Augmented Reality. We understand that AR and VR are unique segments, with some overlap. How will you frame the differentiation for a mostly tech-illiterate audience?

Faizaan Ghauri: Both of these technologies are best experienced to understand the potential. We have found that most explanations are insufficient, just as describing the first iPhone is insufficient before actually experiencing it. The difference is simple, Augmented Reality overlays digital information in the existing environment – take Snapchat or Instagram face filters as an example, there is a digital filter on top of your existing selfie. Virtual Reality transports you to a closed virtual world where there is little relationship to the physical environment you are currently in.

These technologies are incredibly important because they will replace smartphones over the next decade. Augmented reality will be the predominant form of computing as we wear “smart-eyewear”. Instead of looking at one’s Social Media profile on a mobile screen, we will see a person and their Social Media profile will actually just pull up to the side of them. Any future-forward movies like Iron Man or Minority Report show you the technologies of AR/VR that will be coming to use soon.

BRR: What kind of economic value can VR-based and AR-based applications potentially create in the world?

FG: It is estimated that the AR Marketing alone will grow to $198 billion by 2025. The VR market is estimated to grow to $73 billion by 2024. For reference, the Apple app store is responsible for creating $500 billion+ in economic value. So, in just a few years, we will see the AR/VR market reflect half of the current value of mobile apps, and over the decade they will extend far beyond that.

BRR: How can a developing country like Pakistan put VR and/or AR applications to productive use?

FG: Let's discuss both in terms of the economic value we can produce in Pakistan as well as the use cases that will arise for Pakistan.

Firstly, Pakistan is in a prime position to be one of the great countries leading development of Virtual and Augmented Reality applications. With companies like ourselves as well as many companies in the Pakistani market, cutting-edge work in VR/AR is happening today. Not only are we producing incredible VR/AR experiences as our own IP, we have many Pakistani developers working on AR/VR for the big US and Chinese players.

The reason we have such a great talent pool is that there has always been a vibrant 3D game development ecosystem in Pakistan. The domain that is required for these new platforms is native to 3D game development; now what we’ll see is that the domain within gaming is going to apply to every sector. We have the right combination of creative people, talented engineers and forward thinking artists to bring this together.

On the use case side, VR and AR will impact every industry in the Pakistani market, even more so than mobile phones. The reason is that AR will actually have a considerable impact on even blue-collar labor sectors like manufacturing and farming. It is because we will be wearing smart glasses and the world will be augmented with digital information. The level of sophistication to understand the outside world will not be any different than how we see the outside world and respond to it today even if Education skills and language are to varying degrees.

An example I was discussing with a friend who runs a construction business is that his crew will be able to see exactly how to construct structures through 3D augmentations. There is really no educational skill required, you are being guided just like a person was guiding you in real-time on how to build. Smartphones today are still complicated for the masses, although it’s amazing how digitally literate Pakistanis have been in using services like WhatsApp or playing 3D games. But most of the complexity of navigating and using these products will go away with AR/VR.

BRR: Globally, what is the market size for tech firms that are in the business of developing VR and AR?

FG: As Augmented and Virtual Reality will replace the Smartphone; they will be massive markets. The Smartphone has driven the market valuations of most of the large tech companies today like Facebook, Apple, Google, Tencent, etc. So that should give you a scope of what the VR/AR world will mean. It will create new companies that will compete with the previous beneficiaries of mobile development.

BRR: How would you rate the availability and capability of local human resources when it comes to developing high-quality products like 3D Maps?

FG: Quite high, some of the most skilled members of our team are based out of Pakistan. To be able to build the type of bleeding-edge technologies we use requires a fundamental understanding of 3D Geometry and Advanced Mathematics. You are actually building some complex algorithms to render the world and we have seen a great talent pool for this in Pakistan thanks to the great game development talent here.

BRR: On remote working, since the pandemic onset, have you seen an increase in the prevalence of tele-working in Pakistan’s economy?

FG: Absolutely. Even for NetSol, which has been a tech company in the country for 25 years, the culture was very much in-office. The onset of the pandemic required us to radically transform its culture in a matter of days. We had to take over 1,000 technical staff and transition them to be up and running both in hardware and connectivity rapidly. While the logistics of this move required an incredible effort by our network and admin staff, the bigger challenge was getting visibility on our staff and how productivity levels were. With the rollout of NXT, we found that productivity was increasing while less time needed to be spent in a working day working from home.

BRR: What are the key opportunities and challenges facing the future of tele-working in Pakistan?

FG: Work-from-home is here to stay in Pakistan. It is the great equalizer for both men and women. We would typically find with our brilliant female team members that they would join us, become highly skilled and impactful and leave once they had spousal or familial obligations. I think work-from-home truly changes that equation, now you can be managing a team from your house and making a real impact even if you have many personal responsibilities. I believe it enables more of the workforce to participate and earn an income.

The major challenge we have seen is mental wellbeing. We are, by God’s great design, naturally social animals. Studies have shown that the people you work with have a significant impact on your own mental wellbeing and perception of the world. Now we’re all forced to be isolated from one another, it becomes now especially important for managers to understand the mental well being of their teams. I am happy to see more companies paying attention to mental health and I think it will only be accelerated further.

BRR: Your organization has developed a platform – NXT Workplace – that is said to help employees follow Covid-related SOPs/safety protocols so they can safely return to the workplace. How has this platform been positioned from a marketing viewpoint? Which markets/customers are you planning to target?

FG: NXT is a movement first and foremost— we are changing the way people work and engage with their workplace. We create a digital replica of your workspace whereby your community can connect and where employers can incentivize productivity and follow SOPs. Think of it as a company’s own Sim-City like Virtual World. The platform is really meant for any industry that has real-estate. Currently, we’re pursuing multiple industries including education, manufacturing, government, MNCs and local companies.

BRR: Tell us a bit about the organization you lead. What is the origin of WRLD? How long and in what capacities have you been associated with it over the years?

FG: The WRLD platform was borne out of an idea by some of the creators of the Grand Theft Auto series to create a GTA with real world data. I became CEO and a Director almost four years ago. My vision was to take the platform into Enterprise and AR/VR. I believed that the line between Games and Enterprise software was going to blur. Enterprise systems run so much of the world, was there any reason they couldn’t be visually engaging and a joy to use? I believed that the future was going to be full of applications that solve real business needs but also give you the same endorphin rush of playing your favorite game.

BRR: What are the main products/services, target markets and customers at WRLD?

FG: WRLD is a platform that developers can build applications using our APIs and SDKs. We provide you this real-world representation for both the indoors and outdoors that you can then connect with sensors or other data sets. We see a wide range of uses, and our focus is around three areas: Smart Cities, Smart Buildings, and AR/VR Gaming.

The Smart City vision is a platform that lets you see a virtual representation of your Smart City, from the roads and infrastructure networks, to transportation systems and security sensors. NXT represents an application built with the WRLD technology stack for Smart Buildings. Finally, we see some pretty awesome Games produced with WRLD, from Virtual Reality flight simulators where you get points for special maneuvers around the Eiffel Tower to these pretty neat Pokémon-Go type experiences where you can catch Augmented Reality monsters in shopping malls to drive footfall traffic.

The world we are preparing for is the world of simulations. The combination of Artificial Intelligence and Digital Twins will lead to most of our decisions in business being simulated, the outcomes assessed and then decisions actioned. As an example, we will be simulating how best to layout a workspace to ensure social distancing, an AI will interrogate different outcomes until it lands on the most optimal outcome.

BRR: Towards the end, let’s touch the Internet of Things (IoT). It is generally understood that the IoT is configured via embedding a device with sensors, connecting it with the Internet, monitoring and sharing data through a cloud and then running analytics to generate decision-making insights. However, there is not much clarity on the scope of IoT applications that are ripe for implementation in Pakistan’s urban context.

FG: IoT use-cases in an urban context focus really on a few areas: Safety, Sustainability, Happiness, and Efficiency. We are seeing major installations of security cameras in Pakistan in a number of safe city initiatives. These cameras are going to become smarter as computer vision-based technologies like facial recognition and object recognition become more common. We will be able to detect anomalous activities such as criminals in prohibited areas instantly, and security teams will get notifications right away that something isn’t right.

We are at the front lines of climate change in Pakistan, a country most affected by the consequences of climate change while only responsible for about 1 percent of Greenhouse Gases. IoT sensors will give us insight into our environment in real time, how many volatile compounds are in the air and what we can do to mitigate the effects on our population. In some cases, IoT already is becoming fairly common in Pakistan, for instance in the use of Air Quality Index sensors.

Efficiency and Happiness, these are areas that we don’t usually pair together – however, they are greatly linked. In NXT, we see how the use of IoT systems to manage attendance and productivity have a direct correlation to the real-time emotional feedback we are getting in the platform. Happy employees lead to greater economic outcomes, the ROI generated that we have proven at NetSol is one that is sure to appeal to many businesses in Pakistan.