ThreeD Capital (CSE: IDK) doubles down on AR

ThreeD Capital Inc. made more news about its forays into the emerging marketplace for AR, or augmented reality, with the announcement of a $300,000 investment in ePlay Digital Inc., a company focused on developing augmented reality games for sports, eSports, and entertainment.

Sheldon Inwentash, founder, chairman and chief executive officer of ThreeD Capital, has also agreed to become an advisor to ePlay.

This isn’t the first investment in either eSports or AR for ThreeD Capital, a Canadian-based venture capital firm focused on opportunistic investments in companies in the junior resources and disruptive technologies sectors.

Inwentash has long seen augmented reality as another disruptive technology with major potential.

“We are excited to add ePlay to our portfolio, which is our latest investment in the gaming and eSports space,” Inwentash said. “We believe ePlay has a diversified strategy that we find extremely compelling in the gaming industry.”

According to the company press release, ePlay Digital Inc. is a mobile game creator and publisher that specializes in sports, eSports and games that feature augmented reality, like the company’s new title Big Shot Basketball and its Howie Mandel mobile game collaboration.

Trevor Doerksen, CEO of ePlay Digital, said ThreeD Capital had already played a big part of the company’s success.

“Accelerating revenue generation of ePlay’s current mobile game and eSports portfolio, including ePlay games developed in partnership with producer and comedian Howie Mandel, plus the launch of upcoming titles and revenue streams, is an immediate, direct, and exciting result of working with ThreeD Capital,” said Doerksen.

It’s not the first time that Inwentash found a lucrative opportunity with a company focused on augmented reality. After investing in the company ImagineAR, Inwentash joined the company’s Board of Directors in 2019.

“I am a big believer in [ImagineAR] technology, and while AR is still in the embryonic stage, I believe the company has industry-leading technology and is on the cusp of commercialization with a strong pipeline of sales opportunities,” Inwentash said at the time.

Now, in a March 24 interview with Agoracom, Inwentash discussed how that prediction has come to fruition.

George Tsiolis, founder of Agoracom, interviewed Inwentash in March and pointed out that he’d invested in the company early, and was now reaping the benefits, as ImagineAR announced new clients, including GrubHub and Grammy-award winning artist Megan Thee Stallion.

The company also announced major wins in fall 2020. Those included signing on Indian superstar singer Ananya Birla, delivering an immersive conference experience for Shoppers Drug Mart, and finalizing a two-year partnership agreement with Valencia C.F., one of the biggest soccer clubs in the world and the winner of six La Liga titles, to provide its Augmented Reality Platform for fan engagement.

“You found that company, you put your money where your mouth is, in the sub 5 cents, when nobody was thinking about augmented reality or ImagineAR, and now it’s doing deals with some of the biggest names,” Tsiolis said.

At the time of the interview, ImagineAR’s stock value had more than doubled in value in just a few months, peaking at 43 cents (USD) per share in March.

Inwentash replied that augmented reality is an emerging technology that people have talked about for years. He also pointed out that ImagineAR owes its success to CEO Alen Paul Silverrstieen, who worked hard to bring the company to this point.

But he believed this would be the year that augmented reality finally took off.

“I am just extremely bullish on ImagineAR,” Inwentash said. “Looking at the volumes and the quality of the investors now that are approaching Alen, and their research, leads me to believe that this has a huge amount of runway ahead of it.”

Though eSports and augmented reality are just one part of ThreeD Capital’s portfolio, they represent the company’s strategy of investing in early-stage companies where it can be the lead investor and provide advisory services and access to the company’s ecosystem.

This article does not necessarily reflect the opinions of the edtiors or the management of EconoTimes