2024 MIT Houston Symposium: Startup Exchange - iQ3

ALI MERCHANT: --thank the MIT ILP program, to have this opportunity to speak to you. So my name is Ali Merchant, and iQ3 Connect is all about providing scalable, 3D environments for learning and collaboration.

And as a startup, we are working we are interacting with companies in advanced manufacturing. They are building complex products, or they have complex processes like the operating machines or whatever. And this is what we hear from them. They're building a product. It's about quality, timeliness, getting more efficiency.

They're worried about disruptions and threats like COVID. But one of the other interesting areas is also around their workforce, workforce development, workforce training, losing knowledge. We heard about retiring workforce. So these are some of the challenges that-- and companies that we are working with.

And the question is, how do you virtualize some of these complex environments? You're manufacturing something. I can physically explain to you how to disassemble a machine. But if I want to do this in a virtual environment, how do I do that? Do I use a PDF? Do I use a flat screen or a Zoom?

And so these are the challenges that when we talk about digital, how do you capture these complex environments, whether you're bringing in a supplier in manufacturing or you're training a worker to operate a machine or safely operate a machine? And so what we have done is we are providing highly scalable 3D virtual environments, where what you see here is, essentially, a 3D workspace, and it works in a browser.

So there are a number of companies that are providing 3D solutions. But what we're doing is making this extremely fast and easy and very, very scalable. And that's really important for this to be adopted at scale in an environment. And we have global customers that are using this for manufacturing, for workforce training, and many other applications across the product life cycle.

And I'd like to talk about customer success here. This is Sierra Space. And it's very interesting because in a matter of a few months, they were able to scale this technology into their production environment. And what you see here is, one of their vehicles, and they were able to digitize this and bring this into the iQ3 environment.

It has a million components. They can access it from anywhere in the company, and that completely changes the game. So now, instead of sharing documents, I can simply send you a link and you can just be in the spatial environment with this vehicle. And that was a game changer for them.

And so what you see here is an approved image by Sierra Space. And they're able to make this accessible to the entire company. And it had real immediate business outcomes.

So they were able to incorporate this into some of their procedures, which they did not have any tools for before. So I asked them, how would you do this before? And they said, well, we would actually have to go physically and do this on the real vehicle. Now, we can bring that digital record of this vehicle to them, and it's accessible all the way from the top management down to the worker, to the employee on the manufacturing floor.

They have multiple teams using this as a tool, so very quickly and very easily, just using it as a tool in their daily work. And they able to use this also for solving a number of design issues and really address their contractual obligations, which was a huge issue.

Another aspect of this is the workforce development. So not only did we have an industrial success, but we were able to put a high school teacher with about 25 years of high school teaching into this complex environment, and now, take this tool into the classroom for really teaching the kids, so K through 12, and this is creating new pathways. And this was recognized by the National Space Council.

And so we are working with the Department of Labor and Education in Colorado to really change how they're looking at upskilling and this workforce development challenge in the United States.

Minimizing the barriers. So we're a startup. How do we get a tool like this, which is completely changing work? Because you're going from documents, 2D, screen sharing to a completely immersive 3D environment. So we made this extremely easy to use, minimal user training. It has to just work in your existing environment.

The web browser access was a big issue. So that's part of our technology that makes this-- you can send somebody a link and as quickly as you can open a browser, you can access this 3D digital model. You can access it on any device. You can buy a $300 meta headset, and now, you can immerse yourself in a one-to-one scale model of this vehicle. So it's extremely easy to access.

And we've created a complete pipeline where you can create these 3D models extremely quickly. So it's a tool. There's no custom development, and that made it very easy for the company to adopt it in various teams and programs. It's also secure. So in aerospace environment, security is extremely important, and we've done many things to address that as well.

And finally, the enterprise readiness. So it has to integrate into manufacturing execution systems, PLM, and other business processes to really overcome those barriers for scaling and adoption.

So our partnership ask is, we've got this great technology, and we're looking for pilot engagements, aerospace, energy. I know there are a number of oil and gas companies here, you have complex products and operations, manufacturing as well as government and education. So we'd love to talk more, happy to talk about our experience with workforce development. Thank you very much.