SAN DIEGO — November 10, 2020 — Virbela, a virtual world platform for remote work, education, and events, today announced continued growth and momentum in the third quarter of 2020. Part of eXp World Holdings (Nasdaq: EXPI), Virbela saw a 78% increase in new users over the second quarter, while international markets accounted for more than 50% of new user growth in the third quarter. As the global pandemic has forced organizations to adapt to a work-from-anywhere environment, Virbela’s momentum speaks to the growing demand and market opportunity for virtual worlds and immersive collaboration solutions.
“This past year has brought a global surge of interest in new tools for remote work, distance learning and virtual events. People are burned out from the overload of video conferencing, and organizations are looking for solutions that recreate the community and social benefits of in-person interactions,” said Alex Howland, president and co-founder of Virbela. “Virbela is building immersive, virtual environments to solve these real-world problems. We’ve seen incredible adoption and are introducing new features to help people collaborate and stay connected, no matter where they are in the world.”
International Growth and Adoption
While Virbela continued to see strong user adoption across the U.S., Canada, Europe, and Asia in the third quarter, the biggest influx of new users came from Latin America, including Mexico, Colombia, Argentina, and Brazil. Penta Marketing, an agency that specializes in experiential marketing and 3D virtual events across Latin America, partnered with Virbela to create immersive event experiences for their clients, including Mercedes-Benz, Mobil, and Samsung.
“The pandemic has had a tremendous impact on the events industry, altering the way we communicate and interact with one another,” said Camilo Caicedo, CEO of Penta Marketing. “When Penta pivoted from hosting in-person events, we chose Virbela as our go-to partner for 3D virtual events because the platform is intuitive, customizable, and there are no barriers to entry. The alliance between a disruptive software like Virbela and our agency, which has more than 25 years of event production experience, has been the real key to success.”
To keep pace with global demand, Virbela added five new languages for international customers in the third quarter, including Brazilian Portuguese, Chinese (simple and traditional), French, and Spanish. German and Japanese localization is expected to be added before the end of the year.
Virtual Worlds Bring In-Person Experiences to Life Online
Organizations around the world are undergoing a digital transformation and turning to Virbela to bring their business and in-person experiences to life online — from remote work and learning to virtual events. Virbela offers an immersive 3D environment that is easy-to-use, collaborative, and helps organizations of all sizes build communities that foster culture, promote diversity, and are accessible to all, regardless of technology or location.
Q3 2020 customer highlights include:
- Children’s Miracle Network Hospitals, a non-profit that raises funds for children’s hospitals in the U.S. and Canada, held its Fall Business Meeting 2020 in Virbela. Over the course of three days, attendees participated in a series of educational sessions and networking activities. The virtual format showed a 23% increase in attendees from the previous year.
- DXC Technology, a global IT services provider, has been using Virbela for daily stand-ups and collaboration sessions within its Workplace & Mobility practice, with plans to host both internal and client events in the near future.
- Junior NBA World Championship turned to Event Farm and Virbela to create a cross-cultural virtual event experience for its youth basketball tournament. Players from around the world used avatars to interact with one another and featured content from NBA and WNBA teams, live programming from NBA coaches, and music performances.
- HTC VIVE, a leader in virtual reality solutions, partnered with Virbela to launch its VIVE XR Suite for remote workplace collaboration. The VIVE Campus, part of XR Suite, enables organizations to maintain office space, work remotely across teams and regions, and attend events on a virtual campus powered by Virbela.
- MIT Sloan, the business school of MIT, is integrating its curriculum onto Virbela, starting with an executive education digital reality course program inside the virtual world campus.
- Sunderland University in the United Kingdom held its annual welcome week in Virbela to kick off the new school year, bringing together thousands of students for meet ups with staff, fellow students, sports clubs, interactive fitness sessions, among other activities.
This week, eXp World Holdings is hosting the industry’s largest real estate event, EXPCON, on Virbela’s virtual world platform. For the first time, the event is taking place virtually, bringing together more than 10,000 agents, staff, and guests from around the world to connect with eXp leadership, hear from industry experts, and attend breakout sessions with other professionals.
About Virbela and eXp World Holdings
eXp World Holdings, Inc. (Nasdaq: EXPI) owns Virbela and eXp Realty.
Virbela builds virtual worlds for remote work, education, and events. Its modern, cloud-based environment provides a virtual experience for workers, attendees, students and more to communicate, collaborate, meet and socialize. For more information, visit the company’s website at virbela.com.
eXp Realty, The Real Estate Cloud Brokerage, is one of the fastest-growing, global residential real estate companies with more than 38,000 agents in the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, Australia and South Africa. As a subsidiary of a publicly traded company, eXp Realty uniquely offers real estate professionals within its ranks opportunities to earn eXp World Holdings stock for production and contributions to overall company growth.
For more information, please visit the company’s website at www.expworldholdings.com.
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