How gamers helped upgrade this Indian VR startup to awesome

Photo credit: Pixabay.

Much like the hobbit protagonists of the Tolkien novels he loves so much, Gautam Tewari’s startup game-changer didn’t come with bells and whistles. It involved just another meeting in a cafe with a couple of gamers.

“It was a Friday morning in a coffee shop,” the UNSW Australia alum recalls. He didn’t think anything of it – he just knew that he had to show up because someone set the meeting up for him. “I was there, looking serious in a business suit, and in walk these gaming kids, Red Bull in their hands. They probably hadn’t slept all night, just got up and went to this meeting.” He laughs. “It turns out that it was them I had to meet.”

For the past several months, Gautam and his wife Tithi, both architects, had been working successful jobs as designers. They found themselves disillusioned with the slow-moving technology in their industry and needed more creativity in their work.

What was the best for us architects was seriously crap for the gamers.

“We had this idea in the back of our heads that the industry was obsolete. Design visualization was largely passive,” he tells Tech in Asia. “I show you [the client] what I wish to show you, not what you want to see. There’s nothing that I can do for you.”

If a client wanted changes to be made to the design, for example, he or she would have to wait a couple of weeks while the architect made the changes. With the technology available, those changes should be able to be made instantaneously, right?

CEPT Ahmedabad grad Tithi struck out on her own around August and September 2014, and by November, Gautam had joined her. Their new design company was doing well – the duo had about 15 years experience in the industry – but they wanted to get into virtual reality. They were trying to figure out how to balance this with their design business when Gautam got sent to meet with the gamers in January last year. He explained his problem and showed them what they had – renderings that were considered top-notch in their industry.

“These blokes laughed their heads off at the problem we were trying to solve,” he says. “What was the best for us architects was seriously crap for the gamers.” They were trying to work immersive and user-friendly experiences into their designs. He realized that games have had that for years.

Game-based technology was the key that Gautam and Tithi had been searching for. Renewed, they joined forces with the gamers and incorporated their startup SmartVizX in May 2015.

Testing the waters

Gautam Tewari, co-founder of SmartVizX

The founders’ original plan was to expand slowly, developing products over 12 months for a launch that would have occurred in February or March this year. Because of the hype surrounding VR, Oculus Rift, and HTC Hive in particular, they decided to move it up. They began testing with clients around April last year. Their focus is not on building another Oculus Rift but on concentrating on the content creation side of virtual reality.

There were 20-something kids all around us, and here are two 40 year-olds trying to figure out what they wanted to do with their business.

Work and play