Tunisian Startup Onboard Turns Boring Text Manuals Into Immersive Mixed Reality Experiences

We’ve all been there: struggling to understand a 2D diagram of a 3D real life product you’re trying to assemble or, worse yet, written instructions with no diagrams at all. From assembling furniture to starting a new job, instructional manuals are part of our everyday life - but they haven’t developed to keep up with the modern world. Looking to change that is Tunisian startup, Onboard - a company specialised in digitsing manuals and instructions, making them interactive. “Almost all textual manuals are thrown away. Yet, every company needs to send one. Why not solve this once, and for all?” asks the Onboard team.

Founded by Safwen Bouali (CEO), Amine Troudi (CTO) and Cherif Redissi (Lead Engineer), Onboard specialises in industrial training manuals, turning boring written materials into interactive AR, VR and mixed reality experiences. Their model is also applicable to hardware instruction manuals and installation guides, making their SaaS platform appeal to a whole variety of businesses that produce products that require customer assembly. By digitising the whole process, Onboard’s technology also allows customer service to demonstrate, monitor and assist customers remotely.

Previously known as Athena.IO, Onboard was technically launched in 2016 - but in  slightly different form. “We pivoted tons of times to reach the product we have now, a product recognized by Microsoft among the top 5 innovative projects in the Imagine Cup 2019 finals,” explains CEO Bouali.

Onboard has been getting a lot of attention as of late, most recently taking part in Flat6Labs Tunis’s fifth acceleration cycle, following an incubation at Tunisia’s Open Startup. During their Flat6Labs acceleration, Onboard was also selected by France’s Station F - the world’s biggest startup campus - for another acceleration programme.