iXRLabs, a Virtual Reality (VR) EdTech startup for higher education, has raised $800,000 in seed funding round led by an angel investor from the infrastructure development industry. The Gurugram-based startup plans to utilize the funds for scaling up the product, according to the press statement.
Founded by Nihar Madkaiker, iXRLabs provides engineering, medicine, and science-focused experiential and immersive VR educational modules to universities and colleges. The platform aims to create immersive and engaging learning experiences in the classroom and prepare students for the real-life workplace environment. It also claims to have worked with institutions such as IITs, IIMs, NIDs, and organisations such as KPMG, L&T, PwC, E&Y, Adani Group and others.
Virtual reality labs offer a safe environment for conducting experiments. Many complex experiments with complex equipment can be carried out using virtual reality. Procuring all of this equipment can often be a difficult task, and not to mention extremely expensive.
Commenting on the funding, Co-founder of iXRLabs, Nihar Madkaiker, said:
As a mechanical engineer myself, I have seen the gap between theoretical learning and the practical application of the same. Practical lab sessions are often insufficient to bridge this. Moreover, industrial applications and tours are hard to conduct and require significant time and effort to visit. These challenges hamper learning and increase the industry-academia gap among students. iXRLabs VR platform allows students to conduct experiments inside a virtual lab, visit various industrial tours, visualize the processes, and explore life-size industrial equipment, at a fraction of the cost and from the safety of the classrooms.
Madkaiker further added:
We are aiming to take the product to over 1000 colleges, impact over a million students and be among the leading higher education enablers by the year 2025.
By next year, the company plans to accelerate its virtual lab by developing more than 500+ VR modules across engineering, medical and science domains. iXRLabs would also drive a greater focus on building advanced analytics within the product to drive measurable outcomes among students. It currently is deployed at 20 institutions and also plans to scale it to over 200 institutes in the coming financial year.
Speaking about the capital raised, the investor said:
VR is being increasingly used in organizations to skill the workforce on various industrial applications. Over time we would see the iXRLabs product being deployed for industrial applications particularly, for training the workforce in the infrastructure and manufacturing industry as well in addition to the higher institutions.
