Ario, a Norfolk based company, helps manufacturers grow their bottom line by minimizing inefficiencies with AR technology.

In January 2018, Ario co-founders Joseph Weaver and Nate Fender the duo created a five-person team to develop Ario as a marketable product.

“In the energy and utility industry in the US, nearly a third of the workforce is up for retirement in the next several years and defence, and there is not enough qualified maintenance personnel.” “If you’re able to provide somewhat of a tool that can help someone with less experience perform at a higher competency, then you’re able to potentially hire more people who would otherwise be lesser qualified to do more qualified activities.” Nate Fender, COO, Ario

The Ario team worked on how to apply AR and VR in the industrial manufacturing world to identify problems faced by these companies. The answer, they decided, was Ario which is a platform on which manufacturing companies can upload their training and maintenance protocol which allowed employees to follow the instructions in a step-by-step process based by using AR technology.

“AR is a feature, but the true essence of what Ario provides is way more than that,” he said. “Allowing businesses and employees to capture and share expert knowledge inside an organization very easily and then have it be disseminated to new employees, creates a positive feedback cycle of not letting expert knowledge leave the workforce as people either turn over or retire out.” – Nate Fender, COO, Ario

As of 2020, Ario has 15 employees and has raised USD 2 million in seed funding. The company has ten active clients (including the Canon and the US Air Force) and works with companies from the manufacturing industry. The platform generates revenue by using a subscription-based model.

“It’s all about finding the businesses that acknowledge that change has to happen and having them be your advocate,”. “Once they think about the benefits, it’s easy to do the math on how this could impact their bigger business and turn a pilot or testing scenario into a greater conversation about how this technology could scale across their business.” Nate Fender, COO, Ario.