Amit Gaiki and Flam AI: An AI-Native Content Engine That Found Real Revenue by Fixing One Problem
How a consumer app pivot and an obsession with removing friction turned Flam AI into a $10M ARR mixed reality advertising platform
Somewhere in India, someone is scanning a newspaper advertisement with their phone. The image of a juice box begins to unfold, its cardboard flaps peeling back in three dimensions, a bottle of Dabur Real Juice rising from the page and hovering in the air above the kitchen table. The whole thing takes less than a second to load. No app download. No browser lag. Just a QR code and a moment of genuine surprise.
This is the kind of experience that mixed reality has been promising for a decade. The difference is that this one actually works, and a company called Flam AI figured out why the others didn’t.
Watch the full conversation with Amit Gaiki on the Founder Thesis podcast for the complete story of Flam AI’s pivot, their Samsung campaigns, and the distribution strategy fueling their growth.
Check out the video of the conversation here or read on for insights.
From Consumer Dream to Enterprise Reality
Amit Gaiki, co-founder and CTO of Flam AI, didn’t set out to build an advertising company. He and his co-founders, Shourya Agarwal and Malhar Patil, started in 2021 with a thesis about how humans consume content.
Content on internet has evolved since the past two decades. First it was all text content. Then we transitioned into images, Facebook, Instagram took over. Then it was all videos with TikTok and reels. So obviously it has to evolve into something better.
The “something better” they identified was interactive, three-dimensional content that exists in your physical space. Not virtual reality, which cuts you off from the world, but mixed reality, which layers digital objects onto the real environment around you.
They raised a $3.5 million seed round on this vision: build the next TikTok, but for mixed reality. They created a consumer app with avatar systems, motion capture technology, and the ability to make printed photos come alive when scanned. Users loved it. The product was sticky.
Then 2022 happened. The funding environment turned hostile to consumer moonshots without clear revenue paths. Amit and his team faced a calculation many founders avoid until it’s too late: roughly ten months of runway remaining.
Most founders in that position keep pitching investors. Amit’s team asked a more useful question: where is there a business hiding inside what we’ve built?
We realized we need to pivot this into a business-facing entity. Consumers will follow, but you have to build an ecosystem first. And the consumer is not the best place to do that.
The answer was advertising. Mixed reality advertising had existed for years but never scaled. Brands would run a flashy AR campaign, generate some press, then never do it again. It was a gimmick, not a business.
The diagnosis was straightforward. There were two ways to deliver an AR experience. Native apps offered great performance but zero accessibility, because no one downloads an app to watch an ad. Browser-based AR offered accessibility but terrible performance, working on perhaps 60% of Android devices in India with laggy, pixelated results.
Apps have very good performance but accessibility is very low. Browsers have high accessibility but performance is very low. We get the best of both worlds.
Flam AI built a native mixed reality bundle that installs in a single click without requiring an app store visit. Scan a QR code, and within one second, high-fidelity 3D content is playing through your camera. The company achieved 100% device compatibility on Android. The rendering is, in Amit’s words, “pixel perfect.”
The Business and the Numbers
With the friction problem solved, brands actually wanted what Flam AI was selling. The value proposition was clear: every touchpoint where a brand communicates with a consumer could become an interactive mixed reality experience.
The pricing model reflects how brand marketers think. Flam AI charges a fixed fee, typically around 20% of media buying spend, rather than per-impression rates that create unpredictable costs. The platform is self-serve and no-code. Brands create 3D assets using tools they already know, upload to Flam AI, and the system handles device optimization automatically.
What changed everything was repeatability.
There is a lot of repeatability, and there’s also a lot of confidence in launching flagship products with Flam AI. You want to cut out all the noise and be very exclusive, very premium.
Samsung used Flam AI for their Circle to Search launch, creating what Amit describes as the first interactive print ad in India. When Samsung launched voice search, they returned to build what the company claims is the first voice-interactive mixed reality ad anywhere. Google is rolling out Flam AI codes across all their Indian retail outlets. ICICI Bank used the platform to deliver mutual fund presentations through WhatsApp, with a fund manager appearing to stand in the user’s living room.
Flam AI has crossed $10 million in annual recurring revenue. The company raised a $14 million Series A led by RTP Global in May 2025, bringing total funding to approximately $22 million. Revenue is growing “in multiples, not in percentages,” according to Amit.
The majority comes from India, where digital advertising has become the largest ad medium at around ₹49,000 crore in FY24-25. Flam AI has also expanded to the Middle East, Japan, and the United States. The timing has helped: when Meta shut down Spark AR for third-party creators in January 2025, brands suddenly needed alternatives.
Flam AI’s distribution strategy centers on creative agencies rather than direct enterprise sales alone. Agencies can use the platform free with a watermark, build proof-of-concept campaigns, and pitch them to brand clients. When the brand wants to run without the watermark, they pay Flam AI. It’s product-led growth applied to enterprise sales.
The Glasses Question
Every conversation about mixed reality eventually arrives at the same place: what about glasses? Mark Zuckerberg has bet Meta’s future on mixed reality headsets. Apple’s Vision Pro represents a similar wager.
Amit’s perspective is more measured.
Headsets won’t replace phones for sure. Glasses might be the next interface, but only if convenience matches phones. We haven’t seen anything in market yet. You can’t predict it, it can only be experienced.
He points to a pattern anyone who owns a Meta Quest will recognize. Exciting for the first few weeks. Unused two months later. Phones are always with you, always charged, always ready. Until glasses match that, the transition won’t happen.
Flam AI’s bet is that phone cameras are the transitional interface. The company is building the ecosystem, the publishing tools, the brand relationships, on the platform that exists today. If glasses become dominant, Flam AI will already have the content pipeline in place.
The Underlying Bet
Amit and his team are wagering on something specific: that the shift from passive to interactive content is inevitable, and that the company controlling the low-friction distribution layer will capture disproportionate value. They’re not trying to own the creative tools or the media buying. They’re trying to own the moment when someone scans a code and content appears.
It’s a narrow wedge, but narrow wedges have a way of expanding. The advertising use case funds the infrastructure. The infrastructure enables new use cases. Amit started with a vision of billions of consumers experiencing interactive content. He might still get there, just through a door marked “enterprise” rather than “consumer.”
The full conversation with Amit covers the specific technical decisions behind Flam AI’s architecture, details of their Samsung voice campaign, and a deeper discussion of when glasses might actually replace phones. Watch the Founder Thesis episode for the complete story.
Amit Gaiki is co-founder and CTO of Flam AI. The company has raised $22 million and serves brands including Samsung, Google, ICICI Bank, and Dabur across India, the Middle East, Japan, and the United States.
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