BlinQ, a Singaporean augmented reality (AR) startup has just raised US $2million in funding to tap into the growing luxury e-commerce market.

The startup was founded by Bob Chua, a serial entrepreneur with 2 successful Big Data exits (and an IPO on the London Stock Exchange).

BlinQ uses augmented reality to let people "try on" e-commerce fashion products using their phones, and subsequently purchase them from the online store. 

Aside from buying the products directly from the app, users can also rent, subscribe, or pay later for them. 

From a B2B perspective, BlinQ aims to white-label the technology to larger retailers and e-commerce platforms, allowing their customers to virtually try on apparel and accessories, as well as to ride on its platform and automated logistics infrastructure regionally to handle storage, returns, sortation and replenishment.

Moving forward, BlinQ aims to use the fresh funds to scale the business and further improve the product.

The personal luxury market is currently estimated to be $300bn and will continue growing to $500bn by 2020, according to a report by McKinsey.

“There is clear retail disruption happening everywhere, and e-commerce adoption in the luxury space is growing at a staggering rate here in Asia. We see a major opportunity especially with a full-stack platform of providing users with a virtual changing room feature, a marketplace and multiple modes of consuming fashion”, mentioned BlinQ CEO, Bob Chua.

BlinQ is expected to launch in May 2019. A beta product is available for download on the PlayStore.