How Mikaela Jade built augmented reality startup Indigital from deep in Kakadu National Park

If you were to pick a place to launch an augmented reality startup six years ago, there’s a good chance the remote Australian town of Jabiru — hours out of Darwin — would not have been your first choice.

But that didn’t deter Mikaela Jade from establishing her startup Indigitial in 2012. The goal was to bring augmented and mixed reality to Australia’s Indigenous communities, telling their stories on country through these new and emerging technologies.

Indigital’s products include a line of t-shirts and postcards, emblazoned with Aboriginal art that comes alive when paired with the startup’s mobile application. But the company also creates applications for other businesses and is currently working with Microsoft to tell the story of Namande — the 60,000-year-old figure of the Kakadu national park — using the tech giant’s HoloLens product.

“When we started we did everything with mobile tech as it’s the most accessible platform we have access to in Kakadu, and while we’re continuing to develop with mobile with the support of Microsoft, we’re able to put these 3D lifesize holograms on country,” Jade told StartupSmart.

The startup is also working with traditional owners in the community to create holograms of themselves talking about their stories in their own language, and Jade says Indigital’s overarching goal is to constantly push the boundaries of what mixed reality technology can do. Read more

Dominic Powell -  Smart Company - 12 Mar 2018