Sometimes it just takes a few moments to know your destiny. When Simon Lajboschitz first strapped on a Virtual Reality headset to his eyes in 2015 in New York City, he had found a revolutionizing technology that could change the world. With a view to explore this technology Simon moved back to Denmark. It was not long until he witnessed his passionate idea turning into a full-fledged content production studio with its headquarters in the heart of the trendy and creative Meat Packing District in Copenhagen, Denmark. Khora Virtual reality was established. Simon was determined to introduce this technology to the world in a different and innovative way and has worked hard from his days of struggle to success. We have highlighted a few insights from the expert himself as we cite his success story.
The Entrepreneurial Path
Khora was set with the mission of exploring the potential of Virtual and Augmented Reality and apply the tech in meaningful projects. Having this in mind, one of the major challenges during the company’s inception was to understand the technological capabilities and limits. By being up to date with technology, talking to experts and being active in the Virtual Reality and Augmented Reality community helped the team of Khora to overcome this. The other part of the challenge was to communicate these limitations to people that were not so well-versed with the technology but felt inspired by its use cases and wanted to test an idea. It was a matter of selling the vision, while keeping it realistic to current constraints of the tech and client’s budgets for MVPs. To keep this dialogue clear and heighten the inspiration, the team decided to run explorative workshops with their clients. Till date they have hosted over 600 multidisciplinary teams. The skilled team of Khora was determined to overcome every setback making it the leading virtual and augmented reality production house in Scandinavia, and the world’s first virtual reality store.
The Product Bandwidth
All in all, Khora has three business areas: consulting, which also entails the organization of workshop sessions and events, where they take the hardware to client’s venues; the shop, which functions like a VR arcade and is perfect to introduce people to the technology; and the core business lies in the production of VR & AR content for multiple industries. Khora bridges the gap between the physical and virtual worlds.
With the vast exploration concepts, Khora is open to work with its B2B clients across different sectors. Healthcare, art, energy, tourism is a few of the prospect domains. Combining a storefront, educational platform, and production space, Khora aims to integrate people of all ages and walks of life who share a common interest in this emerging technology.
The Leaders’ Views
Bearing a BA in Philosophy, a Masters in Business Entrepreneurship and 7 years of experience in the retail industry as a Brand and Concept leader, Simon was intrigued by the Virtual Reality Technology the moment he was introduced to it. He relates the feeling to the same as being in the middle of a refugee camp in Jordan together with Sidra, a young Syrian refugee girl. After talking to people involved in meetup groups, he met Peter Fisher who had been tinkering with VR and was consistently creating content and testing prototypes. Peter’s passion and vast knowledge in the technology allied to his background in computer graphics and animation made him the perfect business partner for Simon. Prior to founding Khora, he worked for an international retail chain of more than 500 shops as a Concept Leader / Brand Director.
As the CEO of Khora, Simon’s most of the days are jam-packed with the back-to-back meeting, workshops while the evenings are reserved for emails. Supervising daily operations and balancing family life usually fill up his week. Even so, he makes time to be with his family and describes playing with his sons as his safe bubble.
The Distinctive Definition
One of Khora’s key strengths lies in having a strong technical team that can harness all aspects of the technology and adapting it to the client’s challenges. A clear example of this was their work with the Maritime Museum of Denmark, where the client wanted to take visitors through the historic transformation of the museum from a dry dock to an architectural landmark museum. The result was a combination of a 360º video that highlighted the modern-day facilities and a 3D simulation of a boat arriving to the dry dock in the old days.
Everyone in the company is passionate about the technology and sees the vision of what they want to create together. “We work hard, we have a lot of fun and we treat each other as a family,” says Lajboschitz. “Everybody is treated as one and has a feeling that they are “all on the same boat”. As a result, everyone at Khora does whatever is necessary for their organization, teammates, and for reaching the goals. Likewise, “If there is a hole in the boat, whoever is closest, puts a finger in it to stop it from sinking,” affirms Lajboschitz.
The Forthcoming Way
Remaining faithful to their mission of exploring the possibilities of VR & AR, Khora has ventured into several different industries ranging from arts to education, marketing and healthcare. Diversifying the markets in which it operates, allows them to uncover new applications of the technology with possibilities for building scalable solutions. Through a partnership they have with the General Hospital in Copenhagen (Rigshospitalet) and their Center for Pediatric Pain and Knowledge, they developed a VR Pain Distraction tool for children aged 6-12 that can be easily used by nurses on the job with low level of experience with the technology.
This project has recently turned into a product called Comfort XR that is now being used in 6 different healthcare facilities in Scandinavia. This is just the beginning of Khora’s growth. The long-term strategy is to work on more projects that can be scaled and expanded to different markets.
An idea that is nurtured with passion and hard work bears wondrous fruits and Simon’s success exemplifies this. It was his idea to change the world with a new technology backed with confidence about this knowledge of identifying the future of VR technology creating a new level of innovation.
