Breathing new life into boring video conferences with gaming features

UK-based Cosmos' virtual office layout comes with meeting rooms, lounge areas, gaming zones or recreation zones and allows the user to move virtually as he would in the real world

For the past one-and-a-half years, professionals have been stuck at home working. The initial euphoria of being at home and working is now moving to burn-out due to the constant need to be on video-conferencing. The initial excitement of seeing colleagues on video calls is now more about being there with audio ‘on’ but video shut.

While players like Zoom, Microsoft Teams, Google Meets have seen huge spike in usage and revenues, the real intention of these video calls has been lost. There is no sense of social connection. But that does not mean that the fatigue in the virtual world is all-pervasive. So, while virtual meetings have seen a fatigue among users, there has been a surge in online gaming.

The problem is not about the virtual world, but about bringing the right mix of the virtual world and ease of gaming platforms for users to get the connection going. UK-based Cosmos Videos is trying to fill this gap by bringing in gaming features to video meetings, so that people can at least get more involved.

What differentiates this virtual workplace service provider is that it is using the gaming features to office meetings that now allows them to attend meetings, hangout and socialise together.

Cosmos allows users to create or choose virtual venues–so the office layout has spaces for meeting rooms, lounge areas, gaming zones or recreation zones. Moreover, every user can create from the avatars that the company has provided for and add to it collaboration tools that can be shared with everyone.

One of the features of Cosmos is that unlike other video-conferencing platforms where meetings are fixed and repetitive, it allows you to keep moving on the virtual platform like you would have done in the real world. For instance, after a meeting is over, a user can walk out and sit at their desk and continue working. In such a case, the platform offers three settings: Focusing, available and away. Focusing means you are working at your desk so your camera and audio may be off, but if someone wants to come and talk to you they can do so and you at your end will be able to hear them and take the conversation ahead.

“This feature has been so much in demand that clients are now asking us to create a shortcut for this on the platform. This is an amazing way to connect instead of you texting and calling someone,” said Rahul Goyal, co-founder Cosmos.

The other feature that many of its clients are opting for is 100 per cent virtual mode is the collaborative and seamless way of using whiteboards, Google documents and other third party applications like Slack. It also allows people to unwind by playing games or listening to songs on Spotify.

“We realised that sometimes there will be people who may not be a part of a team that collaborates on a regular basis-- especially the sales team. We have integrated Slack into our platform. So now a person using Slack can just join a meeting on Cosmos by the click of a button. This was done after feedback from customers,” added Karan Baweja, co-founder Cosmos.

Last year the company also managed to raise its maiden fund of $2.6 million in seed from LocalGlobe, with participation from Entrepreneur First, Andy Chung and Philipp Moehring of Angel List and Omid Ashtari, former president Citymapper.

Speaking on Cosmos’ business model, George Henry, partner at LocalGlobe, said: “We were really impressed with the vision and potential of Cosmos. Scaling live experiences online is one of the big internet frontiers where there are still so many opportunities. Now that the video infrastructure is in place, we believe products like Cosmos will enable new forms of live online experiences.”

The pandemic has given a fillip to the video conferencing market, which is expected to grow to $9.2 billion in 2021 to $22.5 billion by 2026, at a CAGR of 19.7 per cent said a ResearchandMarkets.com analysis. The impact of this growth was evident on all major players, last year, Google Meet, which was supposed to be an enterprise feature, was made available to everyone. Similarly, Facebook launched Messenger Rooms that allows 50 people to join a video conference.

In terms of customer profile, Cosmos is being used as a preferred platform for collaboration by smaller firms with team sizes of 10-30 people. “We have PR firms, small finance outlets who are on Cosmos completely. Among larger firms, we are being used among other platforms,” said Goyal.

Some of its customers include Amazon, Snap Inc. Citymapper, Accel, Airtable, Facebook, Uber and others.

With many countries getting vaccinated and the urge to get back to office being real, many believe that the use of video conferencing will come down. Even if that is the case, industry reports suggest that hybrid work models may force video conferences to become an integral part of professional life.