Japanese videogame developer, gumi Inc. has been actively involved in supporting the virtual reality (VR) industry across the world for sometime now. Its latest venture comes in the form of an incubation program called Nordic VR Startups (NVS), which the company has recently announced the launch of, in partnership with Nordisk Film.
Nordic based startup companies will be invited to develop prototype VR products supported with dedicated seed funding up to €100,000 EUR, workspaces, and back-office services. Additionally, NVS mentors from gumi and Nordisk Film will support the participants, offering expert guidance, development and business support.
Hironao Kunimitsu, CEO of gumi Inc., said in a statement: “The Nordic region brings tremendous creative and engineering talent to the gaming and film industries, and we’re focused on enabling this pool of talent to grow in the VR market with our available resources and expertise. We’ve already experienced great success with our Tokyo VR Startups program in the East, and by working with the accomplished Nordisk Film group, we’ll be able to expand our program further into Europe.”
Incubated startups in Finland will also be eligible for R&D funding from official supporting partner Tekes, a Finnish funding agency for innovation. Startups will be encouraged to participate in events and the community provided by FIVR, the non-profit Finnish Virtual Reality Association dedicated to advancing VR and augmented reality (AR) markets in Finland.
“By bringing together our strong Nordic entertainment expertise and gumi’s experience in successfully operating VR accelerators, we hope to take aspiring Nordic VR companies to the next level. Our partnership will offer the rising startups in this field a robust set of resources. We believe that Nordic VR Startups can help develop the Nordic VR ecosystem and propel the local VR industry in the coming years,” added Suman Rath, Senior Vice President of Nordisk Film.
This isn’t the first incubator gumi Inc. has been involved in. Last year the company started Tokyo VR Startups (TVS) to achieve the same thing in Japan.
VRFocus will continue its coverage of gumi Inc., reporting back with further updates.