Virtual reality startup AutoVRse bags $2 million funding led by Lumikai

AutoVRse claims to have delivered VR solutions to multiple Fortune 500 companies and industry leaders including Shell, Godrej, Bosch, Tata Motors, Ultratech Cements, and Aditya Birla Group, among others.

AutoVRse, a homegrown virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR) startup, on February 20 said it has raised $2 million in funding led by Lumikai, India's first gaming and interactive media-focused venture fund.

Angel investors such as TensorFlow co-founder Rajat Monga, Jumper.ai founder Yash Kotak, and former Yahoo India chief information officer Viswanathan Krishnamurthi also participated in the funding round.

The funds raised will be used to scale up its enterprise product VRseBuilder to enable VR deployment at scale for digital transformation of training, design and sales workflows for heavy industry and manufacturing enterprises.

The company also plans to use the capital for its expansion efforts in the United States and strengthen its team. It plans to set up a business-to-business (B2B) sales team in the US to drive qualified lead generation and facilitate market expansion.

AutoVRse was founded by Ashwin Jaishanker and Adarsh Muthappa in 2016. The company's flagship product VRseBuilder helps large organisations to create, deploy, and manage VR training solutions and applications at scale, in real-time, across the world.

"Our enterprise solutions offer a ready-to-use, modular technology stack with SaaS-enabled deployment for purposes ranging from worker safety training, to sales training and remote work design collaborations," AutoVRSe co-founders Jaishanker and Muthappa said in a joint statement.

The product helps enterprises across industries such as manufacturing, construction, engineering, oil and gas, and automotive to integrate VR into their workflows.

For example, AutoVRSe deployed VR safety training modules across UltraTech Cements's 51 plants in India and trained over 50,000 workers in VR—reducing factory incidents, the company said.

VRseBuilder has four components including a readymade VR content library, a VR-Native learning management system, a web dashboard that helps IT and security teams manage VR users, devices and content and Unity SDK to rapidly prototype VR apps with a no-code editor.

AutoVRse claims to have delivered VR solutions to multiple Fortune 500 companies and industry leaders including Shell, Godrej, Bosch, Tata Motors, Ultratech Cements, and Aditya Birla Group among others.

AutoVRse also has a game studio that is building a social, multiplayer, rhythm VR game called District M that is positioned as a multiverse dance festival. It is expected to be soon be launched on PlayStation and Meta's VR platform.

"We leverage our in-house game studio to test, iterate, experiment and deliver immersive and cutting-edge experiences for our enterprise clients. This research and cross-pollination of technology has also helped us create an immersive gaming experience with an original IP like District M," AutoVRSe co-founders said.

"Our vision is to build a foundational VR-OS (VR operating system) for enterprises, alongside meaningful, social, and fun experiences for consumers," they added.

Salone Sehgal, founding general partner of Lumikai said AutoVRse's "focus on innovation and providing scalable, VR-led solutions for real problems facing heavy industries, coupled with their state-of-the-art gaming studio, is a powerful combination—paving their rise to becoming a world leader in the VR space".