Google's Indian-origin AR head joins Facebook

Nikhil Chandhok, Indian-origin director of Product for Augmented Reality (AR) at Google, has quit and joined to lead product management of its camera team working on augmented reality at social media giant Facebook. In a Facebook post, Chandhok said he is looking forward to build upon a platform that allows for the creation and discovery of global AR experiences everywhere.

"Now, as I join the Camera/AR team at Facebook, I'm especially interested in building more conversation and momentum in cross-platform camera services," Chandhok posted. "As I join the Camera/AR team at Facebook, I'm looking forward to building upon a platform that allows for the creation and discovery of global AR experiences everywhere.

I'm especially interested in building more conversation and momentum in cross-platform camera services," Chandhok wrote in a Facebook post. Chandhok worked on Google's ARCore smartphone augmented reality platform as well as its Daydream VR platform in his position there. Previously, Chandhok had co-founded Artificial Intelligence startup Bento Labs, which raised USD 2 million from GV and First Round Capital, among others.

"While I'm leaving the team at Daydream and Google, I'm proud of the work we did together. We gave developers ARCore and expanded access to augmented reality tools," he said.

"We also designed foundational aspects of AR platforms and explored how people use AR now and how they'll use it in the future," Chandhok added. In a bid to bring the AR experience closer to Android users, Google in August 2017 released a new software development kit (SDK) called "ARCore."

The platform renders AR capabilities to existing and future Android phones. The company built on the fundamental technologies used in Tango, another AR platform by Google but ARCore is scalable across the Android ecosystem as it doesn't require any additional hardware.