GridRaster Inc., which provides virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR) experiences on mobile devices, has raised close to $2 million (Rs 13 crore) in seed funding from a slew of investors including Bangalore-based Exfinity Venture Partners LLP.
US-based investors Lumia Capital, Pipeline Capital, NexStar Partners, Unshackled Ventures and the Explorer Group, besides some strategic angel investors, also put in money, Exfinity said in a statement.
The California- and Bangalore-based company will use the funds for product development and to enhance customer reach.
Founded in 2014 by Rishi Ranjan, Dijam Panigrahi and Venkat Ramana Dass, GridRaster provides the underlying compute and network stack that powers VR and AR experiences. The company claims that its solutions provide high-performance graphics with ultra-low latency, improving performance manifold.
“We will work towards maturing the product for specific enterprise and customer use cases… We will also look at strengthening our development team,†said Ranjan, CEO of GridRaster.
An IIT Kharagpur and Georgia Institute of Technology alumnus, Ranjan has previously worked at Broadcom and Qualcomm. Co-founder and COO Panigrahi is an alumnus of IIT Kharagpur and IIM Lucknow, and has earlier worked at HCL, Comviva Technologies and Texas Instruments. Dass, the third co-founder, is an engineering graduate from VJTI, Mumbai, and has earlier worked at Broadcom and Symphony Services.
Exfinity, led by IT industry bigwigs V Balakrishnan, Mohandas Pai, Deepak Ghaisas and Girish Paranjpe, invests in technology-led product startups through Exfinity Technology Fund – Series I, which has a corpus of Rs 125 crore.
In April, Exfinity led a $1.23 million pre-Series A round in Bangalore-based artificial intelligence and VR technology startup Absentia Virtual Reality Pvt. Ltd.
