Meta announces $250,000 grant to support five startups, developers in extended reality technology

Developers and startups selected by the social media conglomerate under the program will receive guidance from Meta Reality Labs experts and be able to upload their products to Quest App Lab. A few among the five selected developers and startups also stand a chance to be introduced to local venture capital funds at the end of the program.

The company’s mixed reality program aims to nurture innovation in the extended reality ecosystem of India, the company said.

“Meta is committed to building the XR (extended reality) ecosystem in India. We believe that this fund and program will accelerate the creation and adoption of VR (virtual reality) and MR (mixed reality) experiences in the country and give Indian developers an opportunity to go global with their innovations,” Sandhya Devanathan the vice president for Meta in India said.

The $250 thousand grant announced on Wednesday is a part of Meta’s larger scheme to fund innovation and research in the XR space.

In November last year, Meta had announced it would invest $1 million to support the Federation of Indian Chamber of Commerce and Industry (FICCI) for an XR Open Source (XROS) fellowship program. The fellowship had aimed to support and mentor 100 developers from the country working on XR technology.

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The November fellowship, in turn, is part of a larger $2 million XR Start-up Program which Meta had, in September that year, launched in collaboration with the startup hub of the ministry of electronics and information technology. In 2021, Meta had announced a two-year $50 million investment in programs and external research on XR technologies.