The seemingly doomed United Kingdom-based augmented reality and computer vision startup Blippar.com Ltd. has been rescued by one of its primary investors, Candy Ventures Ltd., run by property tycoon Nick Candy.

Launched in 2011, Blippar raised more than $130 million as of its last funding round and was once valued at more than $1.3 billion. However, the company failed to make money from its AR products and swiftly fell into ever increasing debt until it went into administration — the U.K. equivalent of bankruptcy — in December.

To save the ailing company, Candy Ventures acquired all of the startup’s intellectual property and intends to relaunch under the same chief executive, Blippar co-founder Ambarish Mitra, and retain “many” of Blippar’s original key engineers.

“It was a devastating disappointment when Blippar was forced into administration at the end of last year, but today’s news is a hugely positive outcome,” Mitra said in a statement.

The company will refocus its efforts on a do-it-yourself, self-service AR tool called “Blippbuilder.” The tool operates as a software-as-a-service platform that allows end users and businesses to build their own AR experiences and host them on Blippar’s servers. Such AR experiences could be used to connect customers to businesses by turning phones into a “window” into another reality where physical products and advertisements would trigger interactive marketing or entertainment.

For example, a business could make an AR experience based on a print media advertisement that would ask customers to point their mobile device at the ad. The phone then would use its own camera to make it appear as if a 3-D product was visible in front of the ad — such as a hat or a car — or have a scene emerge showing off an interactive scene where customers could change options — color, size, style and the like.

“We continue to believe in the future of augmented reality,” Mitra said about the product focus. “We see a huge opportunity to create the best platform to allow our customers to seamlessly build and publish successful AR experiences in the same way that WordPress allowed anyone to easily create and publish a website.”

A statement from Candy Ventures pointed out that Blippar was an early innovator and leader in the AR industry and thus still holds promise.

Although Blippar did ultimately collapse, the company brought to bear some interesting attempts at fashioning augmented reality into everyday life. After its launch, Blippar introduced “Blipps,” scannable stickers that could be placed in magazine to trigger AR experiences.

Later, the company added visual search to its portfolio, using artificial intelligence and AR layering to provide extra information about real-world objects. That eventually branched into the launch of a visual navigation product that would allow users to “see” the path to a destination by using their cellphone camera in more than 300 cities using Blippar’s AR City app — which the company also extended to an Indoor Visual Positioning System in August 2018.

“With the right application of its powerful augmented reality technology, there is huge potential for the new company to drive innovation in augmented reality technology,” a spokesperson for Candy Ventures said.

Image: Blippar