Augmented reality postcards offer a slice of Chennai’s history

Even in the age of Instagram, entrepreneur Vivek Mahaveer Jain noticed that people were still sending physical postcards to their loved ones. This piqued his interest and he decided to bring in a different style of postcards. He created augmented reality postcards through his initiative FlippAR.

“The possibilities of augmented reality (AR) are endless and I decided to make use of the technology to engage people with their cities. We have created postcards covering Chennai Central, Napier Bridge, Kapaleeswarar Temple, Fort St George, Madras High Court, and a few other places. Each card will have key feature points and if one scans the postcard, it matches those feature points from our database. It knows what the picture is, and then it superimposes a video on itdetailing the history of the region or structure,” he says.

Their target audience is primarily youngsters, who are keen on learning about the history of their city. “These days, youngsters love to visit new places and explore various aspects like culture, lifestyle and history. Each city will have hundreds of stories to tell. By creating a unique AR experience, our aim is to help people engage with the city in an easier way,” adds Vivek. So far, they have covered landmark sites in Chennai, Bengaluru and Delhi.

So, how do they select the places of a city to turn them into postcards? “We give more importance to a place that has interesting stories to tell. And, these are the places that bring out the history of the city. After covering the prominent places, we will be moving to lesser-known sites as well.”Currently, Vivek and his team are collecting the data of Sri Ranganatha Swamy Temple in Tiruchy.