In February, we reported on a young VR startup that was awarded a $100,00 prize after winning a competition in Taiwan. The prize-winning creation was iStaging: a virtual reality application that creates immersive representations of real estate properties for sales and design purposes. Today, iStaging’s head of marketing, Kevin Basset, announced the startup closed a $5 million round of investment.
iStaging describes itself as catering to “the home market, most notably furniture makers and real estate agents. The company’s AR and VR products include a comprehensive set of tools — from platform-centric apps on mobile devices to VR glasses for visualization,” and it names companies such as Microsoft, Intel, Google and HTC among clients and partners.
This pre-series A round for iStaging was led by WI Harper Group. Harper is a VC firm with specific interests in technology from either the United States, Taiwan, or China. Previous investments include bets on other VR startups such as OwlReality. Also participating in this round is Taya Venture Capital. Taya is a Chinese investment firm with few notable western companies in its portfolio.
iStaging is unique in that it is headquartered in Taiwan and yet, with a core staff of American ex-pats like Basset, it also has the ability to function as a typical North American entity. This type of dual-citizenship is somewhat rare, even for a tech company; but it does make sense in the larger context of the explosive VR/AR growth taking place in the east, with China specifically leading that charge.
iStaging states that with these recently acquired millions it will begin “expanding deeper into territories where it currently has satellite sales offices, namely in Redwood City, California and Paris, France,” and will also continue to dive deeper into the Chinese market as well.
iStaging is available on the HTC Vive, mobile VR headsets, and its own custom hardware. iStaging also provides complete VR kits to real estate agents. The full bundle can be purchased now for $60.
