Image: Aila Images/Shutterstock
Waterford-based VR company rekindles the IPO spirit of Irish tech companies.
Educational virtual reality (VR) company Immersive VR Education is due to make its initial public offer (IPO) on the Dublin and London stock exchanges today (12 March).
The company is aiming to raise £6m (€6.7m) in investment by listing on Dublin’s Enterprise Securities Market and the AIM in London.
Investors in Immersive VR include Enterprise Ireland, Bank of Ireland Kernel Capital Venture Funds and Barry Downes’ Suir Valley Ventures.
The company is being advised in its flotation by Davy Corporate Finance.
A spin-out from Waterford Institute of Technology’s research-based TSSG, Immersive VR Education’s platform provides VR content that can be used in schools, colleges, universities, research centres and corporate training to teach any subject in a virtual environment. Students can fully immerse themselves in the experience, making hard-to-visualise concepts easy to understand.
A Titanic achievement
From left: Orla Rimmington, partner, Kernel Capital; Niall McEvoy, senior development adviser, HPSU department at Enterprise Ireland; David Whelan, CEO, Immersive VR Education; Pamela Pim, head of Bank of Ireland Waterford; and Barry Downes, managing partner, Suir Valley Ventures, on the set of the Apollo 11 Experience. Image: Immersive VR Education
Immersive VR Education, a previous Siliconrepublic.com Start-up of the Week, was founded by husband and wife team David and Sandra Whelan. It has attracted top global talent to work on some of the most compelling titles in VR today.
These include a realistic recreation of the Apollo 11 space mission to the moon in 1969 as well as a faithful rendering of the Titanic that allows users to explore the wreck in VR.
Not only has it created exciting titles, but researchers at Oxford University are using Immersive VR Education’s Engage education platform to create hands-on lessons anywhere in the world.
Combining Engage with the HTC Vive, educators can create interactive virtual classrooms that can instruct up to 30 individuals simultaneously, offering avatar interaction and allowing instructors to be able to observe and provide feedback on a student’s work in real time.
