Gemba, the virtual reality workforce training platform, announced it has raised $18 million in Series A funding at a $60 million valuation led by New York investor Parkway Venture Capital.
The investment will be used to accelerate the company’s growth in Europe, the Middle East and Africa and to fund expansion into the North American market as the company leads the way in the new enterprise virtual reality as a service (VRaaS) training space.
“In the digital age, Gemba is an impactful solution to the biggest challenge faced by transformational leaders—the roll-out of powerful and effective training at scale, in a compelling and cost-efficient way,”
said Gemba CEO, Nathan Robinson.
Through its proprietary Virtual Reality (VR) offering combining software, content, and service, Gemba helps global enterprises seeking to train distributed workforces across multiple sites through highly immersive learning programs, simulated factory walks, and live training events – simply by putting on a VR headset.
“Gemba is set to change the way global organizations train their workforces across all critical learning and development areas – from interactive, on-the-job skills training and safety all the way to leadership training.”
added Gregg Hill, Co-founder and General Partner, Parkway Venture Capital.
On January 20, Microsoft announced it was shutting down an early metaverse-like VR app it acquired a few years ago, AltSpaceVR, after transferring much of the useful metaverse technology to its enterprise mixed reality tool, Microsoft Mesh.
As far as enterprises are concerned, training is probably one of the most obvious wins in the commercialisation of virtual reality. Actually practicing new skills in VR, especially hands-on skills in the field or in highly specialized fields like medicine, is likely to attract more visual learners.
In particular, Gemba seeks adoption among employers with multiple operating locations, virtual reality being a standardized, hands-on approach that doesn’t make executives hard pressed for time travel to learn.
