Israeli Serial Entrepreneur Alon Melchner Establishes New Mixed Reality Start-up

RA'ANANA, Israel, Mar 7, 2018 /PRNewswire/ --

Israeli serial entrepreneur Alon Melchner, who founded WakingApp, an Augmented Reality and Virtual Reality (AR/VR) company, has founded a new Mixed Reality start-up. Mixed Place (https://www.mixed.place) has closed a $750,000 seed round from Israel-based PPI Worldwide Group, which specializes in innovative sales promotions campaigns, including the creation and execution of large scale sales promotions projects to retail chains throughout the world. PPI Worldwide has made available to Mixed Place its operations arms in Europe, North and South America and Asia.

Mixed Place has filed 17 patent applications for developing an infrastructure that will allow users to position Mixed Reality digital content over the physical world. The company aims to develop a series of technologies that will be integrated into its infrastructure. The company is currently completing the first technological phase of the infrastructure, that is set to be implemented as an application in the first half of 2018. The application will allow users to create digital content which will overlay physical reality in open areas and inside buildings. Using the application, users will be able to design, build and share digital overlays that will be precisely integrated into the physical world. Melchner has presented Mixed Place's vision to large scale international prospects, that may help the application to be massively distributed over the globe. Over the course of the coming year, Mixed Place intends to hold a Series A financing found to accelerate the development of advanced Mixed Reality products.

In the past few years, there has been a jump in magnitude in the virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR) fields. The term "Mixed Reality" connects VR with AR to describe the convergence of the real world with the virtual world to create new environments and visualizations in which physical and virtual objects coexist and interact in real time. Global interest in the Mixed Reality market is reaching new heights, as giants such as Google, Apple, Facebook, and Microsoft are expanding their human, R&D, and financial resources in the field. Similarly, Mixed Reality start-up Magic Leap has raised $1.9 billion, including $502 million in a new financing round backed by companies such as Google and Alibaba Group.

Alon Melchner, Founder and CEO of Mixed Place, says: "The entry of Mixed Reality into our lives will be the greatest digital revolution in human history. Mixed Place's vision is to map the world and create an infrastructure, which is also known as AR cloud, that will cover it with layers of 3D digital content. Mixed Reality will create a world in which digital consumption will function intuitively as part of the real world, rather than be limited to 2D screens. This will revolutionize every aspect of life and in countless sectors of the economy, from retail and entertainment, through manufacturing, events production, transportation and defense, to education."

Melchner says: "For example, in retail, we will be able to be digitally accompanied through means such as virtual personas or arrows, that will continuously lead us from the street to the supermarket, and inside the supermarket to specific shelves and products. Soon, the digital layers will mainly appear on smartphones, and within a year or two, glasses will start replacing smartphones as a means of display. In the tourism industry, it will be possible to cover cities with layers of useful information or marketing messages, and even show within the real world how the city's ancient sites once looked like. In education, it will be possible use Mixed Reality to take the pupils out of the classroom to give them a real educational experience through layers of digital content. These are just examples of the countless applications which will create a different reality and break down the barriers to global technological and economic development. Mixed Place will allow countless designers and development companies to be part of this revolution no later than in the next one or two years."

Melchner (http://www.melchneralon.com) served as President and CEO of WakingApp, which he founded in 2012. WakingApp developed a platform for the creation of augmented and virtual reality that allows non-developers to easily create interactive AR/VR content. Melchner, one of the first entrepreneurs in the Israeli digital advertising sector, founded and managed one of the first digital agencies back in 1996.

According to Isaias Miremberg, an owner of PPI Worldwide: "Our decision to serve as a strategic partner and first investor in Mixed Place is no coincidence. It not only reflects our deep confidence in Alon Melchner, a world-renowned expert in Mixed Reality with an integrated background in technology, strategy, and creative. This decision demonstrates  the immense potential of Mixed Reality in a range of industries, including retail and sales promotion, which is the business of PPI Worldwide. We believe that this technology's penetration into the retail industry will grow in the coming years, and we will be one of the spearheads of this technology."

Mixed Place website: https://www.mixed.place

For further details:

Alon Mlievski, +972-50-4438778

Uri Meirovitch PR agency, public relations agency of Mixed Place in Israel and overseas: +972-77-2129988