Birth story of Gidi Virtual Tours
Let me tell you a story about how a problem inspired one of the most useful technological solutions in Nigeria today.This experience started when I relocated to Lagos and was looking for an accommodation. Lagos is quite vast compared to where I was coming from, I had to drive through traffic daily with my infant daughter in search of a place. I searched the internet for something, anything that could give me real life experiences of properties for rent but found none. Then I checked for how people viewed properties abroad and I came across ‘Virtual Tours’…I fell in love with the possibilities immediately and that’s how I became a Virtual Tour preacher and the VR Girl as some call me.
The question for me at that point was, how do I bring this home, how do I impact the lives of people like me who are seeking more convenient ways to do things through the internet, how do I solve these problems while impacting businesses.
It is a known fact that in recent times in Nigeria, digitalization has made life consist more of technology. We have seen the emergence of devices such as smartphones, tablets, smart watches, smart TVs the list goes on. As we continually embrace technology and include it in our everyday life to improve quality of life, work effectiveness and efficiency, technology will continue to advance. Access to the internet has also increased over time and this has encouraged its use to promote businesses, socialize and so many other things. So for me the answers were staring me in the face, people search for everything on the internet mostly with their mobile phones. My solution had to be mobile friendly while not consuming so much data.
As a mother, I know that time management is critical and so I created Gidi Virtual Tours out of the passion for making life more convenient. It’s already stressful having to manage the home, children and work at the same time so everything else should be done with ease including searching for the perfect home or looking for a school.
I became an expert at Virtual Tour creation just like that….I was driven. I have been able to convince some businesses to try out our service, not just in the Real Estate space but Hospitality, Schools, Retail, Work Spaces, Art Galleries and Human Resources. Our virtual tours have allowed potential clients of these businesses have a real life feel of their locations before arriving. I was speaking to an old client of mine the other day and he says he spends less time taking clients to his properties for viewing, he just sends them a link to the property and in a matter of minutes he has so many clients visiting his properties. And I imagine on the clients side, being able to view so many properties in the shortest amount of time from the comfort of their offices, cars or homes.
Virtual Tours are also a type of Virtual Reality content as they can be made viewable on VR headsets. So of course I had to go there as well, many of my clients attend exhibitions and I thought it would be a great idea if they also exhibited their virtual tours as VR experiences. The feedback has been amazing! I’m just happy to see my clients lips grow from the straight line to a smiley.
This technology is here to stay and we will embrace it, we will get better and more widely accepted in numerous industries, it most certainly will change a lot of things from the way we communicate, shop, view, experience, and even conduct business. Even though adoption of virtual tours and VR is generally quite slow, a lot of businesses are beginning to realize the immense benefits it offers and how efficient work can be using this.
I cannot wait to expand the scope to include other industries like Oil and Gas where 3D Virtual Reality content tailored to new employee training can be created for virtual training. Where I will have the opportunity to create an experience were as many new staff can be trained in a short time saving any organization a lot of money, which otherwise has to be invested in materials for practice.
Being an entrepreneur I understand that these things take time, but I’ll keep preaching and evangelizing until we all can just relax from the comfort of our homes and view locations as if we were there.
I’ll just leave this data here….
Here are some of the industries that are currently benefiting from VR globally.
Below is an estimate made by Goldman Sachs on the investment in VR technology by 2025.
See you in 2022!