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In 2013, Rahat Kulshreshtha was just another grad student sharing a cramped dorm room cluttered with textbooks, take-out containers, and a DJI Phantom One omnidirectional drone charging in the corner.
At the time, Kulshreshtha was an aspiring Bollywood filmmaker struggling to get ahead in his part-time job making music videos. He never thought the drone he'd rented to get a cool aerial shot of an Audi on an expressway would one day become the centerpiece of his potentially revolutionary sports technology company, Quidich Innovation Labs.
Co-founded with his then-roommate, Gaurav Mehta, the startup they hatched as a school project has grown into a global broadcasting tech enterprise using state-of-the-art drones to bring fans the closest thing to an in-stadium experience they'll get from the comfort of their couch.
The company, whose name is an homage to Harry Potter's fictional game Quidditch, enhances the spectator's viewing experience with a bit of tech wizardry, Kulshreshtha explains. The pair recently debuted the ICC Immersive app for cricket, the second most popular sport after soccer, with over a billion dedicated fans. A VR extension for Apple Vision Pro, the app launched last month to coincide with the Men's T20 Cricket World Cup (the first ever to include events hosted in the United States), enabling online viewers to watch matches in a 3D virtual space, as if they were on the field with the players. The unique 360-degree nature of cricket, in which players can hit the ball in any direction, including behind them, means this app not only enhances the existing viewing experience but adds an entirely new dimension to it. Because of this, the technology is particularly well suited for cricket as opposed to other sports, although Quidich has partnered with major athletic events like the Hockey World Cup in the past. They're currently working on expanding the app to other platforms, such as Oculus. The ICC Immersive app proves what Kulshreshtha has said for years: Society is tired of two-dimensional broadcasting, and virtual reality is the next evolution of sports viewership.
The Creativity vs. Commerce Conundrum
Deciding to strike out on your own is difficult for every entrepreneur, but even more so for someone like Kulshreshtha, who always dreamed of a creative life making movies. Wrestling between artistic expression and business pragmatism, he finished school and embarked on a ten-day soul-searching retreat in the quiet solace of Northern India's Ladakh mountains. It was there, while sitting alone on the shore of serene Lake Tso Kar, that Kulshreshtha found the clarity to commit to Quidich.
"I realized it doesn't have to be an either-or choice between entrepreneurship or creativity," Kulshreshtha recalls. "It's entrepreneurship and creativity."
Since that epiphany, Kulshreshtha has embraced the symbiosis of creativity and commerce, not separating them. Many of the skills he acquired as a filmmaker, he's learned, are directly translatable to growing his company. One example: the art of storytelling.
"When I look at the next big business opportunity, I'm thinking, 'I need to edit a strategy together and then present it as a compelling story to investors, customers, and our internal team," Kulshreshtha says. "There is so much storytelling that you can do with technology that isn't happening at the moment, and when we identified that, we pivoted fully to a sports tech company."
Commitment Breeds Confidence
With a new sense of certainty that he could grow his business without selling his soul, Kulshreshtha's confidence kicked into high gear. En route to a conference in Las Vegas, he arranged an extended layover in L.A., determined to pitch his drone-driven V.R. innovations to Apple. The only hitch? No one at Apple had actually agreed to see him.
After several days of non-stop networking (and a touch of "serendipity," as Kulshreshtha puts it), he finally tracked down an acquaintance at Apple who suggested grabbing breakfast.
It wasn't exactly a breakfast of champions. "We met for two hours, but I spent maybe 15 minutes talking business," Kulshreshtha laments. "I never even got around to showing him the video we created to demonstrate everything we wanted to do in the Vision Pro." Kulshreshtha chalked it up to a learning experience and polished his pitch, hoping to get a second chance.
Fortunately, that chance came just one week later. His contact from the L.A. breakfast shared that the ICC had just approached Apple, who wanted to popularize U.S. cricket viewership by offering a mind-blowing immersive experience. Kulshreshtha took the next flight to Dubai, this time with the promise of high-level meetings with ICC execs. By the time he left, they'd agreed to partner on the Quiddich-powered app.
While Quidich has grown into a global enterprise, counting Bundesliga and LIV Golf among its clients, Kulshreshtha and Mehta maintain their ethos of combining creative and commercial success.
"People debate whether your work needs to be your passion," Kulshreshtha says. "But we're firm believers that when you mix the idea of your passion with your day-to-day work, the work doesn't feel like work. And the quality of your work is greatly enhanced."
