How HEGIAS is turning virtual reality into a mass medium

Will virtual reality make the leap to a mass medium? The team at HEGIAS is convinced that this will happen in the very near future. With its content management system (CMS), HEGIAS will democratise virtual reality (VR). As another milestone on the way, the Swiss start-up has closed its Series A financing round as of the end of June 2019.

HEGIAS will soon launch the world's first automated, browser-based virtual reality (VR) content management system (CMS) - optimised for the planning, construction and real estate industries. Now this sounds like a rather limited target group if the goal is to create a mass medium, but the story doesn't stop there. Because HEGIAS focuses on the builder and developer as a multiplier who always has his real estate with him with the cloud solution from HEGIAS and invites all other stakeholders such as the architects, specialist planners, interior designers, home consultants, kitchen builders, bathroom fitters, marketers and management, buyers and tenants, facility managers etc. to his planned building projects with a link. The builder thus always has his virtual properties available.

Thanks to BIM

Building Information Modelling (BIM) is currently causing a rethink in the construction industry, and a VR CMS is the ideal complement to this. CAD/BIM planning data can be automatically loaded into the virtual world by architects and construction companies at the push of a button at any time during the planning and construction phase. This means that the objects can be viewed and interactively walked through by one or more people, regardless of location.

Through experience to the right decision

But with the help of HEGIAS, developers, builders and buyers of real estate can also experience their future property, including furnishings and view, even before construction. Everyone involved in the building project speaks of the same thing, because it is guaranteed that everyone sees the same thing. If, for example, the kitchen shelf is too low or a door is in the wrong place, you will quickly find this out when you dive into the virtual kitchen. And you don't even have to be in the same place. Using the multi-user function, people can meet in VR from different places. And if you don't have any VR goggles at hand, you can also just connect via desktop PC.

Different materials and colours can also be tested very easily. This makes planning and decision-making easier and faster. And in the end, brokers will also have an optimal sales tool with HEGIAS, which promises satisfied customers and, above all, enables more efficient "ex plan" sales.

Successful Series A financing

Because the concept is so convincing, further investors from the construction and real estate sector as well as with their own software and start-up experience were attracted to the prop-tech company after the seed financing was completed.

With the Series A financing round successfully completed as planned at the end of June, HEGIAS has passed another milestone. With this round, a further CHF 1.7 million is now available for the development, beta testing and launch of HEGIAS 1.0. Together with the seed financing, CHF 2.2 million has already been invested in the disruptive technology of HEGIAS.

For the remaining conditional capital, a smaller "Series A+" financing round is planned in the coming weeks to have another CHF 800,000 ready for the launch and continued development of the revolutionary solution.

Source: Media release