VR startup SmartVizX raises Rs10 Cr pre-series A funding led by IAN Fund and YourNest Venture Capital

Virtual reality startup, SmartVizX, on Wednesday announced that it has secured Rs 10 crore in pre-series A funding from Indian Angel Network’s IAN Fund and YourNest for its next phase of global expansion. SmartVizX also announced the launch of Trezi, a VR-based platform for architecture and interior design collaboration.

Collaboration has been one of the biggest challenges in the building industry leading to waste in terms of resources, time and cost. With Trezi, architects, designers, contractors, real-estate developers, prospective buyers and tenants can experience the project’s design at full scale using its visualisation, spatial awareness, interactivity with design elements and data management features.

Trezi will dramatically improve the understanding, communication and translation of interior design for all stakeholders in the design process, resulting in reduced errors and omissions, time spent re-visiting decisions, and material waste.

Commenting on the funding, Tithi Tewari, Co-founder and Managing Director of SmartVizX, said, “SmartVizX is the first Indian company to offer a VR platform, which will revolutionise the architecture-engineering-construction (AEC) industry. Leveraging our deep understanding of the AEC Industry and VR, we have created an extremely customer-centric product which architects and designers can introduce into their workflow and create efficiency while dealing with customers and building product suppliers. This fund-raise will enable us to scale-up and help Trezi foray into global markets.”

Speaking on the investment Mohit Goyal, co-founder of IAN and lead investor in SmartVizX said, “Conceptualized and created by architects with over 40 years of accumulated experience, SmartVizX aims to provide smart and holistic solution for customers. IAN spotted this potential early on and decided to support the company and its innovations.”

Amitabh Shrivastav, Managing Partner of IAN Fund said, “We believe that SmartVizX has the potential of becoming a global leader in providing a wide-range of immersive and interactive VR solutions for the architecture, engineering and construction industry. We are excited to support them in this quest.”

Sunil Goyal, Director & Fund Manager, YourNest Venture Capital said, “The Gartner hype-cycle 2017 states 'virtual reality' as a technology has moved to the phase called "slope of enlightenment" implying more acceptable use cases of VR.

SmartVizX and its new product Trezi is uniquely positioned for virtual reality to change the way architects and engineers conceptualize and design. Our customers interactions make us believe that Trezi will quickly become an integral part of the building industry.”

Virtual reality, along with other immersive technologies such as augmented reality and mixed reality (AR & MR) is poised as the next big computing platform, and dominate the technological landscape. The global market for such platforms is expected to rapidly grow, according to Digi-Capital, a consulting firm that covers the industry- Augmented Reality could reach $85 billion to $90 billion and Virtual Reality could from $10 billion to $15 billion revenue by 2022. 

Goldman Sachs estimates that the opportunity for virtual reality in the consumer real estate industry alone will be in excess of US$ 2.5 billion by 2025.