About

Bolt Virtual was established in Athens in 2016 with the aim of promoting the emerging technologies of immersive virtual reality and augmented reality, by offering integrated services in this field. Services and products of the company: 1. A VR software development studio developing VR content either for consumers (B2C) either for institutional and corporate clients (B2B). It has developed over 40 VR and AR applications, including games distributed through Steam and other platforms, games based on exploration of cultural heritage and a large number of corporate VR promotion software 2. Introducing the Greek public to the technology of immersive, room-scale VR via the flagship initiative “The VR Project”, a VR showcase center. It has been visited by thousands of people, hundreds of schools, and delivered VR art seminars and exhibitions 3. Organising VR promotion and educational events with its mobile VR systems by fusing the services above and by adding value added services for private and corporate clients 4. Participating in European and national research Projects that expand the scope and use of eXtended reality technologies, incl. from the Horizon 2020 programme.

Solution & Product

A niche market has developed for XR in 1) industrial training for firms/organisations in a number of fields, and 2) in informal training and experiential learning edutainment for museums/cultural centers and informal education providers. There is a gap in the provision of such training mainly because of lack of material/content. XR content developers are focused on other fields and end-users have not yet discovered the potential of the technology. Training in XR involves expensive and custom content and is often restricted by hardware price and not cross-interface. We have already created content for VR training in the said sectors involving single-user and multi-user interfaces across hardware formats including major players Oculus, Vive and Windows Mixed Reality. We have an in-house, growing Asset and API library and know-how for the mechanics required for successful implementation. We have built specific scenarios for various training modules in both sectors defined above. In this context, we are now putting together experience gained and creating an end-to-end VR training platform solution for industrial training, informal & experiential learning. The platform will bring together the roots of the learning process, instructional design and ROIs of training programs and apply them to the new technology. It will be fully scalable, providing all tools for end users to create scenarios, 3D environments, interactions, training reports etc.

Innovation & Scalability

There is a large niche for our products as defined above and as we have already developed in previous projects. Currently, XR training can cost firms from 20.000 Euro and up per module for the software alone. We aim to cut this cost in half with our Platform which will provide end users with all tools necessary to scale the training within their organization. This coupled with continuous reductions in cost and increase in quality of VR hardware will continue to ignite interest for XR training and learning. The production line has been set up to assure distinct units and scalability for growth: 1) Team of artists/developers/training experts to create a large number of training and experiential learning scenarios using our Asset and API libraries, our storyboard and scenario libraries in our SDK. These tools will also be open for end users to use alone with tech support. 2) Customer service via service and tech support during training implementation where each developer/account manager will be charged with a number of customers to which they will continuously provide assistance. Adding new developers/account managers as revenue and sales increase, especially given the excellent level of human capital in Athens, will not hinder production given the automation that will be developed in our platform architecture. Growth is subject to end-users adopting the new technology and realizing its potential, something that is more and more plausible giving the ever maturing XR market.

Traction & achievements

Established in 2016, we are already a brand name in the XR ecosystem in Greece, having taking part in numerous print, television and radio media presentations, and also several trade shows and academic conferences. We have: -extended experience with final user analysis and needs via the thousands of visitors to our VR experience venue (the first in Greece) “The VR Project.” -catered to hundreds of school visits for informal learning trips and to tens of corporate clients for in-house training. -developed tens of custom applications for XR users including training material, informal learning scenarios, edutainment apps and have access to a large pool of potential collaborators and end-users. -been awarded best “training tool” of 2019 from SkyWalker© education festival. -won funding for a Horizon 2020 Project for the development of a unique training tool in XR for industrial and cultural learning. -won funding from the MIA-RTDI for XR edutainment software development in cultural field.

Team & Why Us

Yannis Parcharidis & Lucas Katsikaris, co-founders of Bolt Virtual, responsible for business development, overall governance of the Firm, sourcing and management of activities and staff, customer service and as well as project managers/creators of the development of XR applications. Managerial experience of 17 & 22 yrs. Athanasios Rogas: Chief VR software developer, expert in Multimedia Computer Applications & Systems, Applications & Computer Networks. 12 yrs experience in the creation/design of games/apps with 6 years specifically for VR. Expert in Java, C#, PHP, Adobe Director, Adobe Flash, Html, CSS.

Funding Needs

Seed A for developing the eXtended reality platform