Metaverse is a multi-trillion dollar industry and homegrown startup, BuzzAR, is leading the charge and waving the Singaporean flag high on the global stage. Since its debut at London Tech Week, the company has landed five large-scale multi-year contracts with government agencies, connectivity partners, and venues globally to make the metaverse accessible to all.
How this founder found a unique niche in the trillion-dollar industry
After producing Meta Oculus’ top Cooking Game VR, The Cooking Game VR, the dynamic duo, Bell Beh and Ken Lim, are onto the next big thing. Since 2018, BuzzAR has been building metaverse solutions in real life (IRL) and has been uniquely positioned for luxury brands — with its clientele including the regional Fortune 500 companies and government agencies.
Leveraging on its skills to produce top VR games on Oculus and more, the duo is set to dive into this trillion-dollar industry, especially with all the opportunities sprouting post COVID. While some of their peers are figuring out ways to cope with the pandemic, the duo’s business has had an 8x revenue in FY 2021, transforming top-notch hotel resorts and integrated resorts and brands, enabling brick and mortars to stand out using various metaverse experiences.
Despite the experience of building the top-selling VR game on Meta, the duo sees unique opportunities in the B2B space.
Game veterans turn metaverse experience in real life (IRL) into its niche
In 2018, childhood friends turned co-founders, Ken Lim and Bell Beh, came together to launch BuzzAR. Based in Singapore, BuzzAR is a location-based AR solution for retail and commerce. As a serial entrepreneur, Ken led 2 other companies to great successes since his days at university where he eventually dropped out in Germany to start his first business. Since then, he helped various businesses generate 8 figure revenues. Now, the mind and soul behind BuzzAR, Ken is building BuzzAR with Bell, a corporate lawyer turned entrepreneur to utilise its gaming expertise for different businesses.
“Perception is reality. Any company that is serious about their brand will continue to shape their perception, regardless of whether there will be a recession in 2023 or not. I learned in my two earlier businesses, with the first one founded in my university’s dorm room, that the marketers who maintain or grow their budgets during recessions are more successful than those that cut budgets. That said, some budgets will shift to “Experiential Marketing” as it is more personalised, triggers consumer-permissioned data, and creates “WOW” moments. This is what BuzzAR is building: we elevate the businesses’ perception by building the Next Gen immersive advertising and marketing platform,” said Ken Lim, CTO and Co-Founder at BuzzAR.
To achieve the vision, BuzzAR has developed some of its enablers, such as augmented and virtual reality technologies, games, and avatar engines, leveraging on generative AI, enabling customers to get the full metaverse experience.
After the successful debut of its face-to-avatar “Pop-Up Metaverse” in real life (IRL) at the Queen Elizabeth II Centre in London, the company emboldens the public to gain easy access to the metaverse by setting up various Pop-Up Metaverse locations in Singapore for enthusiasts to explore in person. Thousands of companies can easily hop on the platform to advertise to consumers who are ready to embark on their Metaverse journey.
With the success of its early projects, the company plans to make “Marketing in the Metaverse” accessible to all businesses, turning traffic into money for businesses.
Brand relationships are being redefined
The metaverse has the potential to reach mass adoption, but companies do not know how.
The pair was thrilled to see how the Pop Up Metaverse — which augments faces and places — help businesses at scale to “enter the metaverse” using the 1-hour setup. To businesses, solving the friction to introduce a complicated product, significantly increase their overall productivity and enhance their guest experience. The experience was delightful and exultant as users could enter the augmented world seamlessly.
Gaining fulfillment from serving customers, bringing innovative ideas into life, and building a happy and inclusive community, Bell Beh reinforced her resolve to walk out on a six-figure job and a stable career in corporate law to nurture more ambitious dreams with technologies.
BuzzAR’s future plans to further expand its metaverse world
Following a series of lucrative fundraising rounds, raising $3.8m in seed funding from F50 Elevate to grow and scale its business, BuzzAR escalated to global prominence with its debut at London Tech Week where thousands turned up, including Singapore’s Deputy Prime Minister, Heng Swee Keat, queuing up to play with their Pop Up Metaverse.
Most notably, adults and children laughed out loud from the pure joy of the surreal metaverse experience.
Riding on this momentum, BuzzAR brought the product back to Asia to introduce it at the She Loves Tech event at Resort World Sentosa, Temasek’s Constellar The Tech Show, a Mediacorp private event, and more. With explosive demands from around the world, BuzzAR plans to further expand its business globally, especially in the Middle East region, where the Metaverse is the key strategy to transform the economy and diversify tourism products.
“BuzzAR is disrupting and complementing the traditional out of home (OOH) media where, in the past 10 years, there was almost no big innovation. BuzzAR envisions a world where the OOH media is interactive, 3D, and immersive. Therefore, the company is inspired to roll out the Next Gen Immersive Advertising and Marketing, allowing any company to leverage the Pop Up Metaverse to advertise and run their marketing,” shared Bell Beh.
The company which had built Generative AI, and rolled out the StyleGAN application, HappyToon, is now onto incorporating ChatGPT, and Dalle-2 applications to its Pop Up Metaverse portal making immersive advertising not only immersive, but it is smart enough to handle all general enquiries while maximising the user experience.
After one visit, BuzzAR, is set to scale its businesses in Singapore and in the lucrative Saudi Arabia market, whose tourism industry is betting $1 Trillion. Being a graduate of the Singapore Tourism Board (STB), Cohort 3, BuzzAR has set great augmented reality (AR) use cases highlighted by STB to the tourism stakeholders. Being data-driven and disruptive and winning the trust of even the government agencies in the Middle East region, BuzzAR is betting big on its Next Gen immersive experience!
To explore more about this Metaverse Marketing experience, BuzzAR has launched Bae, the ChatGPT powered Bae can answer all your questions on WhatsApp!
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This article is produced by the e27 team, in partnership with BuzzAR.
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