Oftentimes, falling back on Plan B is seen as the last resort— but not for Shubham Mishra, Vrushali Prasade and HariKrishna Valliyath, three savvy city-based youngsters, who dropped out of the third year of college to pursue their entrepreneurial dream in the year 2014. Fast forward to two years and they’re currently spearheading the virtual reality arena in India. We chat with the trio behind Absentia, a virtual reality-based start-up, as they’re all set to launch an entertainment and game store in May. This is an online entertainment explorer, where people can develop virtual reality games, movies and videos to give viewers and gamers a real life-like experience,” says HariKrishna Valiyath, chief cooperating officer of the start-up.
Quite like most other youngsters, their start up story is one that was fraught with risks and challenges. “We were just regular college goers when the idea cropped up. It was indeed a risky move to drop out and pursue this full time, since we were amateurs to starting up. In fact this idea was a group college project that structured into a start-up. But I guess, there’s no learning like on-the-job training and we’re glad we survived the tide,” mentions Shubham.
Harikrishna feels it’s all about perspectives. “Like most startups, we faced legal and financial hassles since none of us in the team has had beforehand experience. But I’d like to believe that we were fortunate enough to find funding within the first two years of this venture.” The start-up has now scored a seed funding of '1.2 crores, and has developed about 80 virtual reality games so far.
Digressing from the work front, the 21-year-olds tell us, “I’m an international Table Tennis player (US/Taiwan open),” remarks Vrushali, while Hari calls himself ‘a music fanatic’ with singing and playing piano as his forte. On the other hand, Shubham maintains that reading takes up the most of his spare time. “ I love to catch up on reading whenever I get the time.”
While they aren’t attending back-to-back meetings, The BITS Pilani dropouts stress the importance of compartmentalising. “ We’re a bunch that believe in having working hard and partying harder. So there’s never really a dull moment” chuckles Harikrishna, who goes on to add, “We also like interacting with the younger lot, and giving them some gyan about starting up, because we feel it’s always nice to have open conversation with people than just listening to a mundane seminar. While we were just 18 when we took a chance, we vouch by the fact that academics is important and one must not overlook it unless you’re that solid on the idea.”
Talking about the road ahead, Harikrishna says, “ The aim is to make virtual reality accessible to every user. We hope to emerge as one of the most reputed and trusted entertainment explorer for all the media content. Yes, there’s a long way to go.”
