Dekko Raises $1.9 Million In Funding

Sites include dekko.co . Published on September 20th, 2012. Written by Anthony West.

Augmented Reality (AR) is not a mainstream term, and even developers are not so sure yet how things will play out. But one thing is certain, it is the future of gadgets and how we interact with them. According to Wikipedia, AR is a “live, direct or indirect, view of a physical, real-world environment whose elements are augmented by computer-generated sensory input such as sound, video, graphics or GPS data.”

Imagine being able to project your iPhone’s calculator onto your open palm and doing a few additions, while all the time the phone is in your pocket. That is the gist of AR. The technology behind it is still maturing but Dekko.co hopes to take AR apps to the next level. Founded by husband and wife team Matt and Silka Miesnieks, the company just raised $1.9 million from Echo Ventures, Bessemer Venture Partners, Venture 51, Blumberg Capital, Launch Capital, Thomvest, Eniac Ventures and a host of angel investors.

The company has managed to get the buy-in of over 40+ content partners ranging from game developers to toy manufacturers. There’s also a small army of developers (50 so far) who have dedicated their input to helping Dekko create ‘true’ AR applications for mobile users.

Dekko seems poised to deliver a truly rich AR experience and as co-founder Matt Miesnieks puts it: “We’re certainly pushing the limits of what’s possible on today’s mobile devices. We are combing 3D SLAM and also reconstructing the scene in 3D in real-time on the device. This digital reconstruction is then overlaid on the real world in true-scale, allowing the digital content to interact with it (i.e. be occluded or collide or modify it). It’s a huge technical leap forward compared to current AR technology which relies on 2D image tracking with no awareness of the world beyond the 2D image.”

With such promise, smartphone user and manufacturers alike are in for a treat.

Watch this short video for a demo:

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?&v=BAPkxkLdkEY