Kirin Sinha, founder and CEO of Illumix, has been in the entertainment-tech space for almost a decade. She grew up with an interest in technical spaces (math) as well as creative and artistic pursuits — specifically dance — and wanted to bring both together.
Enter Illumix, a company born out of her passion for both tech and the arts.
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Sinha has set out to help foster creativity but in a tech-forward way that will make a huge impact, and she knew that a tech company is what will help her drive the change she’s looking for.
I believe that the most impactful companies in the past several decades have been tech companies, the ones that can make a huge impact. I wanted to be part of that for the future and redefine who the voices are that are creating this next layer of technology. For me, that was the passion around women in tech, other voices being heard in the tech space, and how they can shape what the future looks like.
Here’s the in-depth conversation that we had with Sinha:
Let’s talk about Illumix. How did it come to be?
I started ideating Illumix in 2015/2016 and then the company was officially formed in 2017. We are a tech infrastructure focusing on bringing together the digital and physical worlds; an augmented reality platform that lets anybody easily create augmented reality content, without having to invest the time, and money building out the technology themselves. So it’s really about how can we make this form of content accessible to brands and companies around the world.
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For those who don’t know, what is Augmented Reality?
Augmented Reality (AR) is bringing the digital and physical worlds together. It’s when there is a digital layer on top of your real world. So, you see something through the lens of a camera but it’s not actually there. The most common example is Pokémon Go.
How have you seen the tech space/business grow over the last decade with social media and its immense popularity?
The growth of social media really gave a lot of power back to the consumer. It really became about user-generated content, and even more recently, it’s become more about personalized content — what you see on your TikTok feed is probably dramatically different from what I see on mine. I think that has really led to the core underlying trend here, which is, that content is more personalized, it’s more interactive, or immersive, and those two pieces take us to the next logical step: augmented reality.
One of the things [AR] does is it allows our content to be even more interactive and immersive than what we see on a 2D screen. It also allows things to become much more about you. For example, in e-commerce, it’s very different to see a 2D image of a model wearing something that may not at all correlate to you versus actually seeing what that product would look like on you as you’re making a purchase decision.
Being able to take all these different components and bringing them into your world, I think, is very powerful and is the foundational trend that’s driven, at least most recently, in social media.
You’re all about the tech, entertainment, and lifestyle spaces! How do all three of these industries play a role in your day-to-day?
I really found my passion for tech and media in 2016. I always knew I was passionate about technology; I always knew I had a creative component. I always thought I was going to be a professor. But when I first started to explore entertainment as a real industry or field that I was interested in, it completely lit me up. I think it was such an interesting time around then, when you saw these big traditional tech companies — like Apple and Netflix — moving into more of a media space. So, that intersection was fascinating to me and it was the perfect blend that I was really excited and passionate about. That’s when I knew that my career was going to be about media and technology.
The lifestyle component is something that I think a lot about because as an entrepreneur, you give 100% of yourself to your company. It always trumps everything in your life and that’s very difficult. It requires a lot of sacrifices, and it can be very grueling, but it’s also long-term; it’s not a sprint, it’s a marathon. You have to think, ‘If I want to be running this company 10 years from now, how can I make it sustainable for me when it takes so much of me?’ So I think that’s where I became really focused around lifestyle pieces and what you can do day-to-day to help drive your success; how you can create habits, discipline, and lifestyle choices that give you the ability to show up 100% every day, but still maintain that for a long period of time.
It’s something that I’ve been experimenting with for years. I feel like I’ve treated myself like a scientific experiment since I was in high school. I’ve tried all sorts of sleeping schedules and diets — I’ve done everything in highly regimented ways and I think that’s given me decades of information on what’s effective and what works for me.
What have you learned throughout your journey of starting Illumix?
There are many things! There were two avenues that I had to grow the most in: perseverance and my relationship with rejection. I think that in most traditional jobs, you might see ‘no’ or see some elements of rejection, but as a founder, a huge part of your job is just to take rejection. It’s to fundraise, it’s to tell your stories, it’s to try to sell and be rejected in every way. I think [knowing] to not be demotivated by that, and actually treating that as motivation to keep going, realizing that no ‘no’ is a no forever, it’s a ‘no’ right now, is important.
That reframing has been really important and I feel every entrepreneur will have moments when they think everything is going down. I think being able to get used to that churn and the volatility that can be there, and always maintaining a level of certainty and vision in where you’re going, is incredibly important.
For me, it’s not about the work and the sacrifice — I was actually quite well-suited for that — it’s the emotional component of feeling like everything is on your shoulders, you have this responsibility to your employees and investors, to reach certain outcomes. You just have to keep going. You have to reframe your attitude towards ‘no’ in such a profound way.
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You mentioned earlier that you want to create a space for women in the tech industry and for their voices to be heard. Have you found that there has been this upwards trajectory for women and their careers in the tech space?
This is 100% a male-dominated industry even today. The number of [female] entrepreneurs has been declining and I think that one of the things that always stood out to me was that there are not a lot of women who are starting their own companies, so that’s already an important space to continue to grow. Further, there are not a lot of women who have technical backgrounds, and who are starting technology companies. Of that pool, you see a lot of consumer-focused brands, but it’s not technology companies, and that’s a whole different ball game to some level. It’s a different set of investors [and] more of a tech focus automatically means it’s more male-dominated.
I would love to see more women pursuing companies that are not gender-specific. It is important for women to serve other women because we have an understanding, but there’s no reason why only men should be running technology companies of the next decade. To my point earlier, the largest and most impactful companies will be technology companies, and that is an opportunity for minorities and women to have a voice and really shape the future in a way that’s huge and far-reaching.
For me to be growing up, and being in the space, and really not seeing a lot of other women [in this industry], I didn’t have that mentor figure for me who could help figure things out, and at some point, I decided this is what I want to do and this is the version of the world I feel passionate about, and want to live in. I’m just going to go and do it and hopefully bring a lot of other women up alongside me. Even if it’s not me in the end, I feel like I made an impact and cleared the way for us.
Advice you’d like to give anyone looking to start a tech company?
The most important thing going in is what is your vision of the world? Not your product, not anything specific to you, but if you can answer the question, ‘in 10 years the world will look like, X,’ and you know your reason for WHY we get there, that’s where the big impact is, in terms of the ways we shift how we operate. If you know that, and that’s your north star, and that’s what you believe in, then there’s always flexibility in how you get there.
What are your thoughts on being a South Asian, female entrepreneur?
I definitely want to say something about the expectations around being a South Asian woman in business. I think in general for women, at least I felt this for South Asian women, there are expectations on balancing family and career and which pieces ultimately come first. And that is always a line I’m trying to dance around because family is the most important thing to me, and I will always be there for my family first, but at the same time, you do need that level of dedication and willingness to give yourself over entirely to your company. I think solving for that balance, and this is part of why I’m so passionate about those lifestyle pieces, and figuring out a way for that to be sustainable for me in the long run, is a big motivation behind why I do that kind of content.
It’s not just a pure optimization game, it’s about figuring out what types of work, moments and crises, and opportunities I decide are at the top of my list and worth me setting that time [out], and what types of family things have to be at the top of my list always. I experiment with that in so many different ways — i.e. no meeting days where I can really just think about the company but also spend more time with family.
Figuring out what those balances are, in being successful in both day-to-day, is one of the most challenging things I go through. The reality is that you never feel great about either. You never feel like you crushed it on both sides. It’s more about stepping outside of the ‘everyday’ and thinking on a wider scale. Like, this year, how do I fill that balance plate?
What’s next for Illumix?
We have historically been, in the majority, in the entertainment-tech field. As an infrastructure play, this year will be about us expanding into new verticals. So for us, commerce is one of the biggest verticals to expand into; we might look at other forms of entertainment like sports or music. So it will really be about creating new use cases and creating new verticals that can leverage Illumix to create their own stories or express content in a new way.
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Sinha’s Illumix has made great strides in the entertainment-tech world since its inception. It was also part of the Disney Accelerator Program with which the team had the chance to work with an incredibly talented and creative set of individuals. It’s only up from here!
Stay tuned for an Instagram LIVE session with Sinha in the near future! Watch our IG for more!
Featured Image Courtesy: Kirin Sinha.
