Company-X spearheading IT opportunities

Minister for Maori Development and Local Government Nanaia Mahuta tries Company-X's virtual reality headset. Photo / Tom Rowland

For half an hour, Cabinet Minister and Waikato MP Nanaia Mahuta visited a cow milking shed, and the Te Kowhai gas station site, without leaving the offices of Company-X in Hamilton.

Equipped with Company-X's virtual reality headset, Ms Mahuta was able to step into a created world where she could interact with everything around her from cows, to taps and gas valves.

"This is amazing. Do you think we could get a virtual parliament where we just sit from home," Ms Mahuta said jokingly.

The simulation which Ms Mahuta took part in is part of Company-X's next step in its ultimate mission of exporting knowledge across the globe.

As part of this mission, Company-X recently acquired augmented and virtual reality specialist Pepper Creative, allowing them to develop virtual worlds for the likes of firefighters, engineers and many more professions to train in, without the risk of danger.

Speaking to the minister, Company-X's co-director David Hallett said it was an exciting time for the company as they are able to grow by simply exporting knowledge.

"There is no shortage of opportunity to do stuff, but there is a global shortage of people in the tech industry internationally, which is why we make so much money exporting knowledge, but at the same time we can't get enough people into the industry," Mr Hallett said.

He said the interest is growing for people to get into the technology industry, and Company-X wanted to spearhead that movement in New Zealand.

"I grew up in Tokoroa and it is really interesting in terms of the opportunity there, the interest they have in virtual reality and technologies in doing things.

"Tokoroa is this nice little source of community where I can go hey you can do this, look what you can do and we can inspire kids to get involved into these sort of things."

He said people have a common misconception that working in IT means you stare at a screen and write code.

"With virtual reality you get to actually stand up and do things and that is one of the ways technology is moving, and you get to do a lot more visits on sites to know what people are physically working with," he said.

Company-X has recently worked with Hamilton Girls High School to inspire students to join their team.

The girls were given tasks like pretending to program a robot to make a sandwich.

"They would say things like, first thing is to butter the bread, and our human dummy would go over and start to butter the whole loaf of bread, so they learnt quickly to be specific in their instructions."

Company-X's world-leading team design and develop bespoke software solutions for local and multinational clients Company-X recently acquired augmented and virtual reality specialist Pepper Creative, growing the team to more than 50.

In addition to ranking on the Deloitte Technology Fast 500™ Asia Pacific in 2017 and 2018, Company-X was named the Fastest Growing Technology Company in the Central North Island.

Company-X won the Service Excellence and Global Operator awards at the prestigious Westpac Waikato Business Awards in 2018 and is a finalist in the Growth and Strategy Award category this year.