Virtual Reality Startup Imaginate Secures $500K Seed Funding From SRI Capital

Hyderabad-based augmented and virtual reality startup, Imaginate has secured $500K in its Seed round of funding fromUS-based early stage VC fund, SRI Capital.

As per an ET report, post funding, Sashi Reddi, MD, SRI Capital will join Imaginate’s board of directors. The latter’s early Seed investor, IIIT-Hyderabad has exited the startup with this round of funding.

The company plans to deploy the funds towards industrial training, design, and maintenance in markets in India and US.

Commenting on the development, Sashi Reddi, MD, SRI Capital said, “Imaginate’s collaboration platform NuSpace is like theWebex of VR and AR. It will revolutionise the way people collaborate and learn by leveraging the best of both – a physical classroom-like environment and the ease of a digital conferencing platform like Webex or Skype.”

Founded in 2011 by Hemanth Satyanarayana, it is an augmented reality-based technology enterprise that offers innovative visualisation products and services which enhance the consumer experience of reality across retail, advertising, and entertainment.

Its products include Dres.sy, a collaborative platform to enable fashion shoppers to virtually try out clothes and also share the experience on social networks; GiftAR, a mobile gifting app for virtual video message augmented on physical pictures; FirstShow, an application-based AR platform to show movie trailers on printed posters or digital posters; and LivAR for enabling open liver surgery using augmented reality.

Hemanth Satyanarayana, MD, Imaginate said, “With just 2 Mbps connection, every NuSpace user can communicate with one another across geographies through realistic avatars. It is less than the minimum Internet speed that an HD video connection would need.”

The startup was also a part of the Nasscomm 10,000 Startups Warehouse programme in 2016.

Earlier in March 2016, Noida-based SmartVizX, a virtual reality solutions startup, raised over $500K from the Indian Angel Network (IAN) and Stanford Angels & Entrepreneurs India (SA&E India). Following that, in July 2016, Mumbai-based virtual reality content studio, SpectraVR raised an undisclosed amount of seed funding from US-based technology venture capital firm Rothenberg Ventures.

Other players in the segment include Absentia, Virtual Mirror, Realise, Ingage among others.