Arutala's Commitment to Accelerate the Implementation of Immersive Technology for Education

Before the term metaverse busy talking, many people are skeptical of the use of immersive technology in everyday life. Apart from taking a long research, this industry used to need devices that were not cheap. These factors lead to the lack of use case in the field.

Even so, the charm behind this branch of technology, which focuses on bringing humans closer to digital objects, managed to capture the attention of Indra Haryadi and Ambar Setyawan to pioneer Arutala in 2019 in Yogyakarta. For the record, this technology allows humans to move and react in the digital world. Virtual Reality (VR), Augmented Reality (AR), Mix Reality (MR), PC Simulator, up to 360° Video are all part of this immersive technology.

“I met Ambar when testing Oculus Quest product that I got while visiting F8 in 2019. It has background which is quite powerful in the immersive world. Long story short, we finally agreed to establish PT Arutala Digital Innovation. We are a lot traction and use case until now," explained Arutala Co-Founder & CEO Indra Haryadi when contacted DailySocial.id.

One of the values ​​that Arutala wants to develop is that this immersive technology can provide solutions in various lines of life, one of which is training that is high risk and high cost. After doing research and observing the pattern of client needs, it was concluded that the training most relevant to these challenges was in the medical and medical fields engineering base.

“By creating a new space through VR and AR technology, we can reduce the number of risks and costs in training in these two sectors to achieve optimal results. The health sector itself is at high risk for training health workers since the Covid-19 pandemic.”

Immersive technology implementation

Despite focusing on training, the company still opens up opportunities for development in other sectors. Some of these development technologies, including: passenger drones VR for Indonesian Frogs, virtual store VR for Ecodoe, automotive virtual web, Gamelan VR, to Artda, namely children's national songs and dances in AR form in collaboration with the Sarisworo Lab supported by the Ministry of Education and Culture (Kemendikbud).

Currently, Arutala partners with seven educational institutions from the vocational to tertiary level and more than 25 product developments. One of Arutala's B2B users is Gadjah Mada University (UGM) for the Faculty of Medicine, Public Health, and Nursing (FK-KMK). In the practice of bathing patients for nurses, it requires a long SOP.

When developing this need last year, Arutala designed it to resemble the metaverse concept promoted by Facebook. Which, the practicum room is made exactly the same as reality and participants can interact with each other in the digital world, through Oculus devices.

For the record, Arutala officially joined the Oculus Independent Software Vendor (ISV) program in 2020. Oculus is a subsidiary of Meta which makes and develops VR products such as Oculus Quest, Oculus Rift, and Oculus Go. Through this collaboration, Arutala has the opportunity to collaborate directly with the team from Oculus and assist the adoption of VR in Indonesia and the Asia Pacific region.

“Last year the nurses used it for teaching and we continued to develop it. We are quite happy with this because we want to make an impact on what we do.”

Apart from UGM, other Arutala clients are heavy equipment principal companies from Myanmar, startups that want to dive into AR-based product development, and others. He is also optimistic that in the future more companies will dare to enter the immersive world, supported by the pandemic that accelerates the use of digital technology.

In its monetization, in the middle of an era early adopting, which makes the industry still in the exploration stage, then one of the business models in Arutala is custom development. So, both Arutala and B2B clients are looking for effective solutions to problems faced by clients. Once the industry is more ready and more use case that can be researched, it will open up more possibilities for Arutala to explore more other monetization strategies.

In the future, to market more use case By using immersive technology, Indra will continue to prioritize the research aspect as the main part of Arutala, multiply use case in various industries, and market education. “We will continue research from before, people don't know the metaverse, but we have made it. Dare to invest more for research is the key to compete with other countries. With that spirit, we want Indonesia not to be left behind," he concluded.

With the spirit of research, Indra also opens up opportunities for those who are brave and interested in immersive technology in the future. Arutala is one of the portfolios of venture builderUMG Idealab since 2020. They have injected initial funds for Arutala with an undisclosed amount.