Appy Pie, which offers a cloud-based mobile app builder, added virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR) features to its platform, so businesses can integrate immersive technology into their apps.

Abhinav Girdhar, CEO and founder, believes small and medium sized businesses “rarely have the resources and budget to integrate the latest and greatest technologies”, and are often at a disadvantage when competing with larger companies.

“With these new features, we are democratising VR and AR,” he continued.

Without having any coding experience or skills, users can incorporate VR and AR “in less than 10 minutes” into Android and iOS apps, the company said.

For now, Appy Pie is offering two features – image recognition and tracking, and panoramic and 360 video viewer.

The first is able to recognise millions of objects, track their position and augment their display For example, a restaurant owner could take a panorama image from their smartphone, and Appy Pie’s plugin can convert that image into a virtual tour.

The second feature allows developers to take photos or capture videos of a location or product in panoramic or 360-degree view, and add it as a 3D texture in an app.