Arijit Bhattacharyya
IMPACT INVESTING

Arijit Bhattacharyya

#91

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Serial Entrepreneur Since 1998 , Technologist, Angel Investor

How many people know you? – Arijit Bhattacharyya

“In my dictionary, “mad”, that very word, I translated into Moderate, Accurate, Determined. So have these qualities and be happy if people are calling you mad.”

ABOUT

My expertise lies in the areas of International Business Development, Technology, Fund-raising Innovation, New Market Development, Risk Management, Market Entry, Deeptech, Systems & Processes .

Concerned to Sustainable Development, Humanitarian, Technologist , Angel Investor, Public Speaker , Business Matchmaking Expert, Artist, Author, Community Builder , Game Programmer , Virtual Reality Specialist , AI Evangelist , Blockchain Specialist, Startup Mentor.

23 Yrs Experience in technology, finance, art, SDG. 12 Millions Networking, Connecting, followers from 95+ Countries.

2 decades of experience in Finance & Technology

Globally acclaimed speaker on entrepreneurship, technology, motivation.

Uplifted thousands of students as a teacher.

Helped several villages to become sustainable and become self dependent.

Founder & CEO – Virtualinfocom- One of the first Game & VR development company since 1998. We make real actors and models as 3D character superhero games.

Founder Entrepreneursface. – Fund raise, M&A.

TEDx Speaker

Consultant Asian Development Bank.

Judge for Startup India Award.

Panelist in Industry 4.0 Govt of India panel.

Star Mentor of Change at Niti Aayog.

Member of the Mentor Board in various University around the world.

Mentor & Advisor to several startups, SME and consultant to many growth stage companies around the world.

My expertise lies in the areas of International Business Development, Innovation, New Market Development, Risk Management, Market Entry, New Technology, Deeptech, Systems & Processes , Fund-raising.

He is an awarded top-rated global business leader, celebrated speaker, top influencer, blockchain specialist and VR specialist and a thought leader.

He is the creator of India’s one of the first 3D games based on epic, mythology.

R & D partner & creator of of Virtual Reality solution since 2001. He is creator of India’s one of the first Virtual Reality institute.

Arijit is an international public speaker and invited as keynote speaker, panelist & jury member at multiple global events which includes Entrepreneurship, New Technology, Future of business, Startup growth, Angel Investment, Fund raising, Intellectual Property, Innovation, Cyber Security, Game Development, Virtual Reality, Scale up business, Wealth management, Startup ecosystem.

Arijit worked in several industries like :

Game, VR, AR, XR, AI, Deeptech.
Technology
Import and Export
Movies & Entertainment
Banking & Finance
Construction
Education
Manufacturing
Electronics
Worldwide web

REQUEST INTRODUCTION Arrow

THE FULL INTERVIEW

Arijit Bhattacharyya

The full #OPNAskAnAngel talk

Jeffery: Good morning. welcome to the supporters fund ask angel. I’m your host Jeffery Potvin. and let’s welcome our investor today which is arjit. How are you?
Arijit: hi, I’m doing perfectly fine.
Jeffery: how are you doing?
Arijit: Very good, thanks.
Jeffery: Very good. Where are you calling from today?
Arijit: Well, I’m from india. at the moment stuck here of course because of COVID. I don’t know if stuck is the right word. It’s pretty awesome in india.
Jeffery: so, I guess you’re in a good place and you’re in good hands.
Arijit: Yeah, of course.
Jeffery: awesome! I love it. Well, thank you very much for taking the time to jump on a call today with us. we’re obviously excited to learn more about your background and all the great things that you’ve accomplished and how you can help within all of the entrepreneurial communities. but the best way for us to start is if you could give us a little bit on your background, kind of where you’ve come from, the great company you’ve built all the way through to where you are today. and then one thing about you that nobody would know.
Arijit: sure. Well, I started back in 1998. So I ran one of India’s oldest game development studios called Virtual Infocom. so it was of course long back when i was 17 years old. I just passed out of school. I decided that I’ll be starting a company instead of joining a company as an employee. I will create employment. and the reason i chose game development as a line is because i used to draw cartoons. I used to create comics when I was in school and that actually was a passion which I started in class, fifth standard or sixth standard writing and drawing comics in a continuous mode. and i used to be thrown out of my history classes because I used to hate history. and in those history classes i used to draw comics and the teacher used to see me because i was a third picture all along. and he used to see that this guy is drawing comics, so i should ask him to quietly leave the class instead of creating some funny moments. but i was actually digging the science behind all those epics, all those mythology which is hidden under Sanskrit. So probably that was the passion which drove me to connect art history and science altogether. and i found that if i need to tell the story to the world, one of the best possible options is to create an interactive platform. I found in 1998 one of the best options was to create interactive movements utilizing animation, and people call it game development. I used to travel to a lot of different places in my city with my bicycle. I used to play. I used to visit a lot of cyber café. So if you remember, Google didn’t exist at that time. Google probably just started in Silicon Valley and we never ever heard about the search engines. It was the early days of Windows where I started the pc with Windows 95 with all those floppy disks, without thinking of high-end memories. so as a kid when i started of course, i tried to think of building an empire. but i failed. i felt the reason is i was too early for the market at that time in india. nobody was talking about game development, at least in Calcutta. So I’m actually from eastern part of India, the city called Calcutta, where we have a lot of culture, a lot of literature, and a lot of scientists, who usually come forward. I started talking to people. I started going towards the movie industry film directors, wanting to make them understand exactly what I’m talking about. probably that will help them to create their marketing campaign but because i was too early, i couldn’t sell myself. so the story goes like this for my life story. When I was struggling for the next one year, I decided not to struggle. Rather, create a different kind of pool, of starting an academy. so Virtual Infocom started its first academy in the year of 1998 – 1999. early days probably in the month of march and i had only one student. I decided that I’m gonna create my own employment pool and we are going to create a great game and then probably sell it to the market. there was no concept of investment. there was no concept of how sales would happen. It was all passion. so out of passion, from one student, it became 20. Twenty eventually became 500. So, I was teaching from morning to night. I became a professional faculty inside my own institution and parallelly I was doing my graduation. So I left science and joined economics, statistics and mathematics as a combination so that I can understand and learn a bit about business. After two years of continuous work with passion, Virtual Infocom became inside my blood a red blood corpuscle or something like that. so when i was sleeping, i was sleeping on that concept. I was eating on that concept and eventually we created our first game title which is based on an Indian epic story. and then i actually started talking to people with that prototype, giving them a free demonstration utilizing those days. CDs came in the market. so he burned one cd, put in a nice cover on the top of it and then i started talking to people who can actually market it inside the market. So somehow I got my first break from one of the cd resellers and he really loved that game. and he said that he would love to market your product. He would love to become your partner. so we signed an agreement with a 50-50 revenue sharing basis. that became a little bit of a hit. at least in the local market. and then, we made a basic amount of money through which we can create a proper