AR Entrepreneur Anna Belova Predicts a ‘Phygital’ Future.
Forbes-30-Under-30 honouree Anna Belova asserts that the digital economy must go ‘phygital’ to avoid cannibalising itself, a stance which evangelises Augmented Reality (AR) and a slew of emerging technologies at a time when the world is outpaced by their novelty.
In 2019 Ann Belova was featured in Forbes 30 Under 30 for her promising career in edtech and AR. Three years later, the Russian co-founder of DEVAR, a New Jersey-based AR company, is rallying the world to phygital, an AR-driven economy, and taking pride in her company’s success in the development of AR contents and products. Phygital is the AR-based economic model, Ann believes, could forestall what she describes as the inevitable “cannibalism” of the digital economy.
According to her, any technological move to sustain the digital economy in its present state must begin with an expansion outside it with AR and a slew of complementing technologies actively shaping the interaction between the physical world and the digital space as we know it.
“You can think of Phygital as an evolution of everything that has been
developed in computing, AR, VR and is set to dramatically change
the way we live, work, communicate, travel, study, entertain and
much more”, Ann recently told POSTR. “We are heading to a future where all physical objects in the future will be Phygital, i.e.powered by a set of breakthroughs (AR, IoT, M2M, etc.), while online environments (Social media, eCommerce, etc.) that exist today in the digital form only, will finally merge with physical objects not just as an add-on, but rather as an integral part of it”.
REVAMPING THE DIGITAL ECONOMY
Commenting on the state of the digital economy Anna stated that: “ Despite its rapid growth in recent decades, the digital economy still accounts for less than 6% of the total economy, while the traditional economy still dominates heavily. But with the rise of digital natives we estimate it will reach at least 50% of the world GDP within the next 15–25 years — that’s a whopping $100–200 trillion upside. On the other hand, we can see that the digital economy is under a huge threat itself as it will very shortly reach its full capacity in terms of user penetration worldwide”.
DEVAR’s recent technological strides in edtech show that revamping the digital economy is a complementing effort targeted at rebranding and sustaining it within a new set of protocols driven by the convergence of emerging technologies and their breakthroughs. In the last two years, DEVAR has created a series of educational augmented reality products for kids, including books, toys, flashcards and play sets thereby enabling AR to hugely impact learning in the phygital world.
LEVERAGING A $200tr INDUSTRY
With a growing market share in 40 countries across the world , DEVAR recorded a total sale of 12 million Phygital products in 2021 leveraging what is estimated to be a $200 trillion industry. In late December, the company released the annual State of Phygital report in which it diagnosed the world economy as critically ill and prescribed phygital as the vacine to cure it.
The economic impact of Phygital can be measured in terms of its enourmous potential to boost efficiency and productivity across all the
major economic sectors. In essence, it is predicted that the Phygital revolution will lead to a dramatic redistribution of wealth and assets, primarily disrupting the offline world and acting as a gateway to the offline economy for today’s digital enterprises
