Arjun shakes hand with Paul Bulmer. The deal is done. He switches off his gadget and reclines in his chair. It's almost time for the Champions League final. He decides to leave in 15 min. Jawaharlal Nehru Stadium is not far from his office. He relaxes in his chair and rewinds the deal in his mind. So Paul's wearable suggests users the choice of food and restaurants in the proximity based on the user’s food preference, mood, climate and time of the day. Arjun's company is in the business for few years with their innovations in artificial intelligence (AI) space. Considering the 10m roaming users that Paul's wearable has, now for them it means handling 10m queries in real time from all over the world.

It's time to leave for the stadium now. Paul said he will also be at the stadium for the final. His location is Wembley Stadium. The final will be held at the Turin Olympic Stadium and virtually projected to many stadiums across the globe based on their subscription in this June of 2030.

No it’s not from any Sci-fi movie. This can be the reality in few years time where real and virtual will coincide. Have you tried catching a Pokémon while you roam around places? The place you are in is reality and the Pokémons are augmented to your reality. Let's see how Arjun and Paul can meet at a place coming from two different places. Arjun and Paul are in their offices. They are projected into a gadget. The gadget creates a virtual reality around them. In that space imagine a quiet room, a board table. In a combination of Virtual Reality (VR) and Augmented Reality (AR) Arjun's and Paul's live images are projected to two sides of the table along with their chairs. For the entire duration of the meeting they are in that space; talking to each other; face to face. No more waste in travel time and expenses; reduced number of meetings; reduced number of back and forth communications. And the deal is done.

Now that we have come across few terms

such VR, AR and AI we need some more explanations of them. Virtual reality projects us into a created world or simulates our presence in the real world. Examples are simulation games or watching live events etc. Augmented reality overlays digital imagery onto the real world. An example is Pokémon GO. A VR creates a virtual world around us where we cannot see the real world. Whereas an AR is our real world that is augmented by the digital imagery. AI is a system that is able to perform tasks such as visual perception, speech recognition, decision making etc without requiring involvement of any human intelligence in the process. In a computer based exam throwing the next question based on our ability to answer the previous questions or suggesting a restaurant based on our past data, are examples of AI.

Virtual Reality projects us into a created world or simulates our presence in the real world, where as Augmented Reality overlays digital imagery onto the real world

Few decades ago how many of us believed that an event happening in some part of the world can be seen live right in our drawing room? This is reality for many years now. Then there are 3D televisions. In future an entire event may be live 3D projected in the similar environment. In our VR we will listen to a leader speaking in front of us when she is actually based in somewhere else.Through the VR we may participate in a course from a reputed university without needing to travel to the other side of the world. This is where we are heading.

According to reports the value of VR/AR venture capital made in 2014 and 2015 is $3.4bn.Facebook acquired Oculus for $2bn. The size of the real estate market only in the US is $52bn that VR stands to disrupt. AR is going to disrupt the gaming industry at a large scale. According to an article in Forbes 'Pokémon GO' has 65m monthly active players as on April 2017. The technology giants such as Google, Sony, HP, Facebook, Intel, Apple, Disney, Microsoft, Fox and many more are investing in the this space. Healthcare, engineering, real estate, live events, video entertainment, retail, military and video games industries would be part of the VR/ AR ecosystem at a large scale. The show has just started. Oculus, Sony Play Station VR, HTC Vive or Microsoft HoloLens, Google Glass, Magic Leap are just the early stage disruptions in the VR/ AR. In future there are many more exciting innovations coming up. The technology companies will focus in the hardware and software innovations to capture this huge market. My strong belief is the developments will be entirely consumer centric. And no one will be left apart. This is probably the best part of the eco-system; this will be all inclusive.

The scope is few hundred billion USD in terms of the size of the VR/ AR and AI market in about 15 years. When today's tech giants are going all out to capture this space many new ventures would emerge in future. Given the data we have in hand today, the three countries US, India and Israel would lead the show with many new ventures. Few startups in India have already started independent research and innovations in AI and AR. The future looks very interesting.