Ajit Padmanabh the founder & CEO of Who VR™, is a strong believer in technology recreating the ancient world and is on a mission to marry the ancient with the modern. Ajit’s main motive for initiating Who VR is to nurture and elevate the collective consciousness of humanity. Ajit himself is a multi-talented person who has been into studies, music and other co-curriculum activities at the same time. As Ajit says, “Learning should be fun!”, Who VR is created to merge education with entertainment.
After he completed his B.E. in Instrumentation Technology, he joined Infosys to fulfil his father’s dream. Since childhood, Ajit has been always inspired by his parents to pursue his dreams. His parents always encouraged him wholeheartedly in his musical pursuits. The freedom to follow his own dreams since his childhood has helped him to be the one, he is today!
After 18 years at Infosys, the entrepreneurial spirit, with the hunger to create something new for the world, has driven him to create Who VR. Throughout his journey, he came across several technologies like Mainframe, Java/JEE, and eventually AI. VR was not in the picture at all, until the time he wanted to perform live shows at heritage sites and was advised that it’s rather ambitious. He explored VR and AR technologies which eventually birthed Who VR, a start-up focusing on crafting heritage experiences through the use of cutting-edge technologies like Virtual Reality, Augmented Reality, AI, and Blockchain.
Music- the passion
Ajit has been a cultural bug since his childhood days. He creates great music and is a good artist too. History, philosophy, and ancient culture have always been some of his favourite subjects. Drawing ancient temples, memorizing all dynasties, wars, etc was fun for him. Little did he realize the grand design of the Universe and why he loved the subject so much!
Who VR™ The company
Who VR™ is an amalgamation of Ajit’s tech and digital learning, interest in art, culture, and history, and passion for retelling the stories of our ancestors. The company is focused on Digital Heritage, Arts, Culture, and History, and the mission is to make History Enjoyable by marrying the ancient with the modern. From the VR-enabled tours of inaccessible temples to reliving the majesty of ancient ruins in their heyday, Who VR explores the sheer power of leveraging the modern to understand and get awed by the ancient. They create the grand narratives of history on a global scale while fostering a deep-rooted sense of belonging to our heritage. Started in 2020, Who VR has seen good traction in terms of clients, keen consumers, and businesses alike for the realm of History and Heritage.
Who VR™ Client Base
Who VR has a healthy pipeline with multi-crore deals for reviving regional heritage at some important locations across India. They operate in B2B, B2B2C as well as B2G models with Airports, Governments, Private Enterprises, and Global content platforms in the USA, UK, EU, and Taiwan.
Strategic Partnership
In the short span of its existence, the company has forged strategic partnerships in India and abroad with companies ranging from VR Content platforms to Network Infrastructure and R&D centres. Notable partnerships include 5G-Edge provisioning with Intel, R&D on Heritage Computing with C-DAC, and Hardware partnerships with Healium (USA) and Virtual Ware (Spain).
Virtual Reality- Metaverse
Who VR is creating an Indic Metaverse, with a focus on Indic History, Culture, Heritage, Arts, and Ancient Sciences, all under one roof! Its app ecosystem ranges from Heritage VR tours (including 360 tours) to new-age experiences like ConcertSCAPE™ (VR Music Concerts against Ancient Site backdrops) and Heritage Games (ancient board games as well as strategy games), all with the motive of engaging the youth and looking to spread the deep knowledge and wisdom of our ancestors to the next generation.
Initial Challenges
Throughout the journey, the spiritual thought process gave him the strength to never feel down and keep trying. He says being passionate about one’s work is fine but keeping oneself detached from the outcome is necessary to have a balanced life. There have been times when great breakthroughs, dream-come-true moments, and times when equally great disappointments have been a part of Ajit’s and Who VR’s journey. He also agrees that he is blessed to have a supportive co-founder and co-workers.
Leadership improvement from early days mistakes
Ajit says, in the initial days at Infosys he was a natural taskmaster and at times he had to be a bit harsh to get the job done. But the newer version of Ajit tries to look at the issue from different perspectives and thus finds a solution to every problem that occurs. He believes it is important to avoid disasters with long-term impacts. He says, “Patience and persistence will manifest your dreams.”
Revolution
Speaking about revolution, Ajit expressed that for him, revolution means inner transformation. He strongly believes that “inward is the best way forward”. Even Quantum Physics talks about the power of the observer to change the reality around her. An elevation of the collective consciousness of Humanity would be the greatest revolution. Such a revolution would ensure Humanity would progress beyond Utopia.
Evolution of Virtual Reality
Virtual Reality has been around since the 90s. An industry needs certain pre-requisite conditions to thrive like the coming together of combinational technologies, investments in R&D, and critical mass acceptance and awareness, among other aspects. In the 90s, when Virtual Reality was starting to develop, the dreamers spoke about Virtual Worlds and Metaverses but the software technology and the visual modeling technologies fell short of living up to it. With time, there were great strides in software and 3D modeling hardware which paved the way for “Immersive, Multi-sensory” content creation. In the 21st century, there has been a resurgence of AI thanks to high-GPU processing capabilities. At the same time, mobile networks have evolved with greater speeds and greater accessibility. Blockchain and Digital Ledger Technology (DLT) have been revolutionary in the financial segment. All of these strides have ensured that the timing of VR and AR with other mentioned technologies is perfect to set in motion, the dream of Virtual Worlds – The Metaverse.
Ajit expresses how satisfied he is to showcase the rich culture and heritage of our country.
He is proud of the depth of knowledge our ancestors possessed and that as a company, they are in a position to showcase that depth like never before, for everyone, across the world, to learn from. He is very proud of the multi-dimensional team at Who VR that brings together the depth of ancient knowledge. Their Historians, Neuroscientists, Film-makers, Sound Engineers, Technologists, Business Heads, and musicians all work with a single-minded focus to bring out the depth of ancient Indic thought across various fields like Temple Architecture, Astronomy, Music, and other Ancient Sciences.
Industry Hurdles to overcome
According to Mr. Ajit, the lack of foresight on the possibilities with these new-age technologies curtails the high-risk, high-capital investments required today. The challenge is to bring home the creative aspects of these technologies, across industries, and paint a future of immersive interaction to power the next-generation skills and jobs, for the investments to flow today.
Decision- making process that Ajit follows
He evaluates every opportunity, every partnership against the long-term vision and goals. Ajit follows an OKR-based approach and evaluates various perspectives associated with the problem at hand. It could be perspectives ranging from “competition” to “complementary” and from “defence” to “offense” depending on the situation at hand. He believes in “Outcome over Ego” and hence this approach, not deciding based on his thinking. Digging deep into “Gain Vs Loss” and their “Positioning” are some of the other perspectives. He follows this meticulously for all strategic decisions which involve the partners, customers, and opportunities.
Scope of creativity in Who VR
The whole work process is creative. Ajit says he learns a lot from the team and he is grateful for the lateral thinking they bring to the table. For new joinees, the company follows a novel way of introducing them to creative thinking through group-flow techniques as prescribed in “The Philosophy Handbook at Who VR”. It is a handbook that encompasses the company vision and mission and also includes guidelines from the ancient manuscripts on the way of working, the duties, single-minded focus of energy, and passion for their motive, thanks to his team member Adithya Rangan, an engineer as well as Vedic Chant-healer from Bangalore.
Most importantly, it provides the boundaries for their company in terms of technology, its purpose, its ethics, and what they should NOT create as a part of the content in the company. He attaches a lot of importance to ethics and does not intend to indulge in businesses at the cost of the well-being of his clients and their users. User-driven economics is not their model. This is also part of their creative thinking – to provide boundaries to what their purpose is.
Upcoming events
Who VR is planning to develop content around ancient temples, sites as well as experience centers at museums and statues across the country. The company has recently onboarded Dr. Anand Venkatraman, a renowned Neuroscientist who has a deep fascination for ancient Indic thought and its relevance to modern neuroscience. The company intends to undertake neuroscientific experiments with visualization in VR of various Indic thoughts and this would be largely driven by him.
They are looking to pioneer the Indic Metaverse including a dedicated social media site purely for heritage and crowdsourcing the vast content and knowledge of the local population Pan-India. While they continue to work on the ecosystem and build new-age products, they also aim to bring in local artisans into the Indic Metaverse to sell their products, be it handicrafts, textiles, toys, etc., and induct them into the Metaverse economy – Aatmanirbhar Artisans will not only ensure the longevity of the generational artforms of India but also ensure economic liberation for the masses. In the long term, they also believe that Metaverse Addiction will be widespread, much like social media addiction today, and they want to be prepared to tackle the same through their in-house research on the prowess of ancient sounds on the listener’s brains for healing.
Ajit is a voracious reader of varied themes spanning from biographies to philosophy, metaphysics, technology, and geopolitics. It just helps bring in a sense of grounding and enhanced creativity with an ability to connect dots across different domains and realms. He also takes interest in music and digital art. His recent album “Voider Perspectives” is worth hearing.
-Entrepreneur Insights