Tech team takes firms into a new dimension
Conferences can now be held in their own virtual world
THE cancellation of all business events in the UK last year because of the Covid-19 pandemic sent shockwaves through the industry.
With no way to safely hold any exhibition or conference, big or small, in person over the last 12 months or so, organisers were left scrambling for alternatives.
Spotting a newly formed gap in the market, the team behind Manchester-based immersive communications platform PixelMax set to work to create a new 3D events and conferencing software which could fill the void.
In an exclusive interview with BusinessLive, director and cofounder Shay O’Carroll has lifted the lid on his company’s transformation from providing virtual factories for major blue chip clients to hosting international events in their entirety - and where the industry may go next post pandemic.
A trading name of Imagin3D, PixelMax uses 3D interactive technology to enable businesses to create and host their own virtual worlds.
The company, which is led by cofounders Mr O’Carroll, Andy Sands and Rob Hilton, is now poised to increase its headcount from the current 12 to up to 70 by the end of year and has already reached 50 per cent of its revenue target for 2021.
The swift growth comes on the back of Solid Bond Venture Builder, which is headed up by Shaz Sulaman, investing £250,000 in PixelMax and the company recently completing a £2m funding round led by Praetura Ventures.
The Manchester-based investment firm has previously backed the likes of Artorius, Challenge Group, Culture Shift and Dr Fertility. The latest funding round was completed with participation from ACT Capital Partners.
Imagin3D, which was founded in 2019, had been all set to begin digitising key manufacturing processes in aerospace and other high value manufacturing at the start of 2020 but the work vanished when those industries were among the first to be hammered following the first national lockdown ordered on
March 23 last year.
The blows came thick and fast: the MACH 2020 Exhibition, in which the firm was to be specially showcased, was cancelled and the business was not even permitted to occupy the office space it had secured in the Bonded Warehouse in Manchester’s Enterprise City. Mr O’Carroll said: “We were really worried. All our planned projects crashed and burned.” However, the team created a virtual version of the same space in which to stage Imagin3D’s Beta platform launch, complete with keynote speakers. Guided by a steering group of leading industry figures, the company morphed into PixelMax, a new platform for staging virtual events, deploying all the latest tricks of immersive technology.
Mr O’Carroll added: “We managed to win two high profile commercial projects. Providing the platform for the first ever virtual conference of the Chartered Institute of Public Relations was just about the scariest first gig anyone could get, but it worked out very well over the three-day duration and won a lot of plaudits.”
Fellow co-founder Andy Sands said: “Demand for virtual events was surging. Back in March 2020, 62 million video conferencing apps were downloaded in a single week.
“Covid-19 has forced us all online, but since most of the platforms were developed pre-pandemic, the virtual experience for many has been dull and flat, with online conference fatigue becoming part of the ‘new normal.’ But PixelMax brought many more exciting applications than just conferencing. The platform enables you to create and explore your virtual space, with the only limit being your imagination.
“We set out to provide a much more fulfilling platform and PixelMax was created after widespread research into what people did not like about existing virtual apps and what they wanted to see.”
PixelMax then hosted a virtual event by digital transformation company Publicis Sapient, with 1,500 global attendees over 52 hours and secured the investment needed to take the innovation further.
Most recently PixelMax delivered Digifest 2021, a major edtech conference over four days and provided the platform for Made Smarter’s Journey to Digital conference for the Growth Company.
Mr O’Carroll said: “This has been a momentous time for us as a business with co-founders from Manchester and Liverpool; a truly iconic moment.”
Mr Sulaman, whose investment company Solid Bond Capital specialises in supporting start-ups, said: “I have seen hundreds of startups and invested in many over the last few years but PixelMax has far the biggest potential and prospects for the fastest growth of any of them.
“PixelMax is a new and original idea; something different. I believe it could potentially be a global platform within a short space of time.”
It enables you to create and explore your virtual space, with the only limit being your imagination
Andy Sands