00:00 (upbeat music)
00:02 - Hi, I'm Tathagato Niyogi.
00:07 I'm the co-founder and chief innovation leader
00:09 of Immersive Trails.
00:11 Immersive Trails began as Heritage Walk Calcutta in 2017.
00:15 The pandemic, just like it had hit everyone, it hit us.
00:19 It took us by surprise, kind of.
00:22 And once the lockdowns kicked in,
00:24 we decided that we'll pivot online.
00:27 And we started by testing the waters,
00:29 by giving out online workshops,
00:32 community outreach workshops on heritage.
00:35 So we were lucky enough that by July,
00:38 we actually got one of my long-term friends
00:42 from Exeter University to come on board as an advisor.
00:46 And also he invested some money.
00:48 And we started thinking about pivoting our experiences
00:53 completely on a virtual platform.
00:55 So we started offering these experiences via Zoom.
00:58 We had done so far, we had done more than 50 virtual tours
01:02 and people from more than 30 countries
01:05 had joined these tours.
01:08 And people from more than actually 120 cities
01:11 from all over the world had joined these tours.
01:13 And it's a fascinating experience
01:15 to actually be able to pivot online at the time
01:18 when all the touring activities were off
01:22 and to actually be successfully doing and surviving
01:27 through the pandemic by conducting virtual walks.
01:32 Also, and this is something I'm really proud of,
01:35 that we did not have to fire or even cut salaries
01:39 of a single person in our company during the pandemic.
01:42 Going ahead from here,
01:43 we are actually working on launching
01:46 a virtual tours platform where people from all over the world
01:50 can rent these virtual tours at their own time
01:53 and watch it at their own time.
01:55 So it would be like a Netflix of virtual experiences,
01:58 immersive virtual experiences.
02:00 And we are also planning to launch an app later in the year.
02:04 (upbeat music)
02:07 [BLANK_AUDIO]
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