In episode 266 of Total Retail Talks, Joe Keenan interviews Shrenik Sadalgi, director of research and development at Wayfair, and chair of the Khronos 3D Commerce Working Group. Listen in as Sadalgi discusses why he thinks 3D content has yet to gain widespread adoption among retailers, how consumers aren't yet used to interacting with 3D content on a regular basis, and how retailers can leverage this technology during this time of increased e-commerce activity.
Sadalgi shares how Wayfair has teamed with other leading retailers to join the Khronos 3D Commerce Working Group, a collaborative initiative working to create a set of guidelines for 3D, augmented reality, and virtual reality experiences, as well as what Wayfair hopes to gain from participating in this initiative. Sadalgi explains how Wayfair is already using 3D content, potential new use cases for the technology, and how the online retailer is tracking the effectiveness of its 3D technology in the consumer shopping journey. Lastly, he explains the difference in consumer behavior he's tracking between mobile and desktop users, why it's essential that competitors are collaborating on these technology concepts in the Khronos Group initiative, and how he sees 3D technology impacting the Wayfair business going forward.
Shrenik Sadalgi is an ideator, a futurist, a thinker-doer and a technologist. As director of research and development at Wayfair, he leads the exploration of far-future R&D for Wayfair, where he’s pioneering the future of retail and home by leveraging emerging technologies. Shrenik also serves as chairman of the Khronos 3D Commerce Exploratory Group, a group of leading retail and technology companies exploring the opportunity to accelerate the adoption of 3D experiences by establishing a set of universal standards for platform-agnostic 3D model creation and distribution. Prior to joining Wayfair, Shrenik helped build Horizon Mobile out of the CTO’s office at VMware; helped create a pointer-based, interactive media system for TV at Hillcrest Labs, and an AR experience allowing users to collaborate and casually create music in a shared physical space called ARmonica that was exhibited at UIST 2010. Shrenik holds a Masters in Computer Science from Columbia University, where he was a recipient of the MSTA fellowship.
