How Grahas VR Is Transforming Workforce Training Across Industries

India’s industrial sector is rapidly digitising, but workforce training remains stuck in the past. Despite billions spent annually, most companies still rely on physical training to onboard factory and field workers, where methods are slow, expensive, and hard to scale.

This inefficiency caught the attention of Srinivasan V, a self-taught entrepreneur in Chennai, who had been experimenting with virtual reality. Srinivas explained, “Usually, people start with a problem and then find a solution, but I had VR and was looking for a strong problem to solve.

This led to GrahasVR, a brand owned by “Square Comp” based in Chennai, India, that’s building immersive, environment-specific training modules for industrial workers. Today, it operates across four countries, serves 11 enterprise sectors, and is helping reshape how frontline teams learn in complex, high-risk environments.

The Self-Taught Entrepreneurial Journey Into the VR Space

While Srinivasan had the right skill sets and years of experience across sales, services, and marketing in the IT sector, his lack of formal education led to repeated rejections in job interviews. These setbacks became the trigger for his entrepreneurial journey.

Srinivas says, “I’m self-taught and have worked across roles in support, sales, and exports. I would often make it to the final round of interviews, but kept getting rejected just because I didn’t have a degree. That’s when I decided to build a company where skills matter more than certificates.”

Srinivas began his entrepreneurial journey with a hyperlocal technician service focused on consumer computing infrastructure. He ran the business as a sole proprietorship under the name Square Comp Solution. A few years into the venture, he began to notice a downward trend in the smartphone market.

“Computing craze and mobile phones are kind of in a downward spiral. Now, we are no longer interested or excited about any new smartphone launch. But it became clear to me that VR could be the next major form factor in the evolution of computing.”

Challenges in Industrial Workforce Training

Grahas VR began its journey by building VR headsets designed as smartphone accessories. However, the team soon realised there were limited use cases beyond media and entertainment. Around the same time, a casual conversation with an HR professional at a large manufacturing company revealed the challenges they faced in training their workforce, sparking the idea that shifted the company’s direction.

The training of the workforce in industrial companies came with a set of persistent and costly challenges.

  1. Safety risks: Hands-on training with heavy machinery exposed trainees to significant safety hazards. Inexperience in operating complex equipment often led to accidents, making it difficult for companies to provide real-world training without putting people at risk.
  2. Costly errors: There was a constant risk of damaging expensive machinery during training sessions. A single mistake could lead to breakdowns or the need for costly repairs, which further increases the burden on operational budgets.
  3. High costs: Companies invested heavily in physical training setups, recurring sessions, and full-time trainers, where annual training budgets frequently ran into several crores without a proportional return on retention.
  4. Time-consuming process: Traditional training programs could take anywhere from 12 to 18 months for a single worker to reach full productivity.

Grahas VR connected the dots from industrial training challenges and discovered a new use case for their VR headsets in workforce training.

Srinivas explained, “The companies spent around 5 to 6 crores per year training 300 blue-collar workers, with training taking 12 to 18 months per person. And that cost and time scale were mind-boggling to me. That’s when I saw VR as a powerful alternative to traditional training methods.”

A Growing Set of Use Cases Across Industries

Grahas VR delivers training through immersive 3D-based virtual reality modules and customized solutions where the primary users are frontline workers who are trained in skills like equipment handling, safety, and operations and the key decision to avail the product and its services is taken by plant heads, CIOs/CTOs, and learning and development leaders.

Initially beginning as a manufacturing-focused solution, GrahasVR is now being adapted for R&D, product development, marketing, and site operations across sectors like pharma, shipping, and heavy industry.

Srinivas explains, “The same training simulation we built for a factory floor worked just as well for product demonstrations. If you have a large industrial machine that’s hard to transport, we can recreate it in VR, and you wouldn't need to ship it around anymore.”

Building a Platform That Adapts to Real Work Environments

Grahas VR offers deeply customised solutions where every virtual module is tailored to match a client’s tools, layout, and work procedures.

“We realised early on that even two factories making the same product don’t look the same,” Srinivas says. “So we started developing content that mirrors each client’s real environment.”

User research played a big role. The team worked closely with HR, IT, and plant operations to identify core problems. One major insight came from observing how workers remembered training better when it was delivered through stories and emotion rather than just steps.

This led to the development of the STEP framework, Story, Emotion, and Place, which became Grahas VR’s methodology for designing content that sticks.

“If you just tell someone ‘press this button,’ they forget. But if you simulate a fire, show the consequence of not pressing it in time, and anchor it in their workplace, the learning stays.”

Grahas has trained over 500 frontline workers, where clients reported a 40% reduction in training time and an 80% reduction in onboarding costs.

A Network-Driven Entry, Expanded Through Partnerships

Grahas VR’s initial enterprise adoption came through direct outreach, anchored in industry networks in the automotive sector, which helped establish early relationships. The team also gained visibility through their position on the FICCI Tamil Nadu State Council’s technology panel.

“We started by reaching out to people we already knew in the industry, where Co-founder Sriram brought over a decade of experience working in companies such as Mercedes,” says Srinivas. “That gave us the first few opportunities to deploy our product.”

Grahas VR then began investing in digital channels to broaden its reach, where SEO, content marketing, and a storyboard-style video series helped widen its reach. The company also experimented with podcast content to engage a broader professional audience.
To expand internationally, Grahas VR partnered with IT services companies in Dubai and Saudi Arabia. These firms did not offer VR-based training solutions internally and used Grahas VR’s product to serve their existing client base while also building an affiliate network of industry consultants who continue to refer enterprise clients.
Today, the company has solutions deployed across 11 to 15 enterprise segments and operates in four countries: India, Australia, the US, and Nepal. Over 500 people have been trained using their modules across various industrial roles.

Tracking Engagement Through Average Daily Usage

Grahas VR currently operates as a services business, charging clients based on man-hours and technical complexity, and tracks its core metric of ADU (Average Daily Usage), measured in hours, where the team focuses on how much time users spend with the product each day.

“We don't track daily or monthly active users as our service is used only for the specific use cases,” says Srinivas. “If someone is spending five to six hours a day inside the experience, it means the product is truly integrated into their workflow. That’s our north star.”

The Shift to AI-Powered XR Glasses

Grahas VR is closely tracking advancements in AI-integrated XR glasses, which Srinivas believes will fundamentally reshape the immersive tech landscape.

“The real transformation will happen when XR moves from bulky headsets to lightweight glasses,” he says. “That’s when usage will scale and the product becomes an extension of the self.”

He points to recent announcements from companies like Google and trends highlighted at Google I/O, projecting that XR glasses could replace up to 20% of the smartphone market in the next four to five years.

“When that shift happens, even our goal of five to six hours of daily usage will become realistic,” he adds.

Join ProdWrks Today!

Let’s join hands and build a network of brilliant product visionaries!

Enter your details to register

Enter your details to register

Enter your details to register