An Indian Oculus Rift anyone?

The virtual reality scene in India just got hotter with a little known device that can put a 3D spin to multiple things – from a panoramic picture to a piece of real estate to your favorite video game. And yes, Tesseract has made heads turn.

Absentia, the company that came up with the Tesseract headset, has just bagged INR12 million (US$181,000) in seed funding from investors, including Astarc Ventures and 50K Ventures, the Economic Times reported.

The startup was founded last year by Shubham Mishra, Vrushali Prasade, and Harikrishna Valiyath when they were studying at the Goa campus of engineering institute BITS Pilani.

Their product has been compared with Oculus Rift, the virtual reality company that deals with 3D gaming and that Facebook snapped up for US$2 billion. But Tesseract is looking at a larger canvas.

“Absentia aims to beat global competition with its novelty. The device-agnostic technology developed by the team can convert any media or game to virtual reality and simulate it on our own head mounting device – Tesseract,” Shubham was quoted as saying by ET.

The virtual reality canvas

Virtual reality has begun digging into everything – from fashion to sex to house-hunting to, of course, gaming.

So you have fashion house Dior crafting Dior Eyes, a new virtual reality headset. Virtual tours are offered by Common Floor, allowing viewers to assess multiple properties from anywhere at any point of time.Then there’s BKK Cybersex Cup that incorporates interactive virtual sex with the looks of a computer game.

But the potential of virtual reality is yet untapped in India. And that’s what the founders, who have even dropped out of college to focus on their startup, are hoping to do.

Architects, those in real estate, as well as product designers could find a friend in Tesseract.

“Our VR walkthrough support allows users to take a VR walk with 360 degree vision in any 3D model which could be very useful for architects, product designers, in real estate etc,” Shubham says.

Those who love photography can click panoramic pictures and get a 360 degree view of it with the device. Tesseract’s 360 degree video player allows users to watch videos with complete 3D immersion and also allows live streaming of 360 degree videos from YouTube, the founders say.