- Metadome.ai has raised $10.6M total to fix online shopping's biggest problem.
- Customers can't see products properly; here's how XR and AI are changing that.
E-Commerce Has a Seeing Problem. Metadome.ai Is Building the Fix.
Online shopping has a fundamental flaw that no amount of high-resolution photography has solved: customers cannot truly see what they are buying. A sofa looks different on screen than it does in a living room. A car's interior can't be felt through a browser tab. A pair of shoes worn by a model conveys nothing about how they'll look on the buyer's feet. The result shows up in the data — e-commerce return rates in home decor and fashion run between 25% and 40%, and cart abandonment sits persistently above 70% across categories.
Kanav Singla has been working on this problem since 2016. An IIT Delhi alumnus and Stanford Seed program graduate with over a decade in extended reality technology, Singla co-founded Metadome.ai — formerly known as Adloid — with Shorya Mahajan and Kartik Kanaujia to build the immersive layer that online commerce has been missing. In August 2024, the Gurugram-based startup closed a $6.5 million Series A, bringing its total funding to $10.6 million and setting up its push into the US, Southeast Asia, and the Middle East.
What Metadome Actually Builds
Metadome's platform allows brands to create and deploy AR, VR, and 3D product experiences across web, app, and in-store environments — without requiring customers to download anything or brands to build custom technology from scratch.
The use cases break across three verticals. In home decor, customers can place a piece of furniture virtually in their own room before buying — seeing how it fits the space, the lighting, the existing colour palette. In mobility, the platform powers virtual showrooms and virtual test drives, letting a prospective car buyer explore an Almond Beige interior on a Tata Nexon at midnight from their phone rather than visiting a dealership. In e-commerce, brands can enable 3D product views and try-on experiences that go beyond the flat photography that populates most product pages today.
Metadome.ai boasts a client base of over 50 and is part of both Nvidia's Inception programme and the Google Startup programme. Its enterprise roster includes HP, Tata Motors, Hero MotoCorp, and Asian Paints — four companies operating at the intersection of exactly the verticals Metadome targets. As of mid-2025, the company employs 76 people, a significant scaling from the lean founding team that spent years building the core technology before commercializing aggressively.
The $6.5M Series A: Who Bet on Them and Why
The Series A was led by Siana Capital, with continued participation from Chiratae Ventures — which first backed the company in its $4 million pre-Series A in December 2021 — and new entrants Alteria Capital, 3to1 Capital, and Manish Choksi's family office.
The investor mix is deliberate. Chiratae is one of India's most active early-stage technology funds. Alteria specialises in venture debt for Indian startups. Manish Choksi — who runs Asian Paints' strategic investments — brings both capital and a direct commercial relationship through Asian Paints' existing deployment of Metadome's technology for home decor visualization.
"With this funding, Metadome.ai aims to double down its position in markets including the U.S., SE Asia, and the Middle East," said COO Shorya Mahajan. For Alteria's SVP Akshat Saxena, the appeal was straightforward: "We are excited to partner with Metadome as they continue to build a global product company from India. Their focus on getting the right GTM for overseas markets and this capital raise puts them on a strong footing to scale the business."
Why AI Changes the Economics of XR Deployment
The original pitch for AR and VR in retail was compelling but operationally painful. Building a photorealistic 3D model of a sofa, a car, or a shoe required weeks of specialist work per product. For a retailer with thousands of SKUs, the math never worked — the cost of 3D content creation far exceeded what improved conversion rates could justify.
Generative AI has broken that equation. Metadome's integration of AI into its XR pipeline allows 3D product models to be generated faster and at a fraction of the previous cost, making immersive commerce viable for mid-market brands that could never have afforded bespoke XR production. The platform's ability to let enterprises "go live almost instantly," as Chiratae's TC Meenakshisundaram noted, is directly tied to AI compressing what used to be a weeks-long content production process into hours.
According to Statista, AR and VR in retail and e-commerce attracted $1.9 billion in investment as of 2024, reflecting how seriously major players are taking the immersive commerce thesis. Amazon has invested in AR try-on for fashion. IKEA's Place app for furniture visualization has been downloaded tens of millions of times. The market signal is clear — the question is who builds the infrastructure layer that makes this accessible beyond the top 20 global retailers.
Metadome's bet is that Indian enterprise companies — where the distribution relationships, the cost structure, and the founder network all align — give it a faster path to scale than trying to compete head-on against US incumbents like ThreeKit or Perfect Corp in their home market.
Bottom Line
Metadome.ai is building at the intersection of three concurrent trends: the maturation of XR technology, AI-driven cost reduction in 3D content creation, and e-commerce brands finally willing to invest in reducing returns rather than simply absorbing them. With $10.6 million raised across six rounds, 76 employees, and a client roster that includes some of India's largest automotive and consumer brands, the company has moved past the proof-of-concept stage. The Series A-funded push into US, Southeast Asia, and the Middle East is where the next chapter gets written — and for Newzchain's audience of India-origin founders eyeing global markets, Metadome is worth watching closely.
Edited by Nabarun
