Bobby Thandi
Bobby Thandi is the Founder and CEO at XR Games, is an award-winning games development studio specialising in immersive AR and VR games. 2021 saw the release of 'Zombieland VR: Headshot Fever' for multiple platforms through the use of OpenXR. The title was 'Game of the Year' finalist at the 2021 VR Awards and TIGA Awards. XR Games won the GP Bullhound Award for 'International Success 2021' and also won TIGA Awards 'Best Small Studio 2021', with Bobby himself a finalist for Entrepreneur of the Year at both the Prolific North Tech Awards and the Leeds Digital Festival Awards 2021. In 2022, Bobby won Entrepreneur of the Year at the Leeds Digital Festival Awards 2022 which celebrates the success of the digital & tech industry in Leeds and the wider city region.
Following university, Bobby's career in the games industry started after joining Dubit, where he was given the opportunity to become an executive producer after securing one of his first deals with DreamWorks, which eventually led to him leading Dubit’s digital team of 50. Within five years, he was already being headhunted by EA. However, Dubit helped him set up his own studio with £100,000 seed capital in March 2017 and XR Games was born! In early 2022, XR games raised £5.9m from existing investors Act Media Ventures, Praetura Ventures and Maven, using a slice of the funds to move into a brand new studio, based at The Half Roundhouse, to support its expansion plans by developing key relationships with global partners such as Sony Pictures, Meta, Microsoft, Valve, and others.