Jigspace lands $5.2m after nabbing new customers Panasonic, PepsiCo

A developer who once built arcade games for TimeZone has raised $5.2m and landed a major partnership with Alfa Romeo as his start-up looks to shift up a gear.

Jigspace has raised a $5.2m bridging round after landing partnerships with Panasonic and PepsiCo. Pictured: co-founder and CEO Zac Duff.

A Tasmanian game developer who once built arcade games for TimeZone has landed $5.2m in funding to further his augmented reality start-up.

Zac Duff is the co-founder of Jigspace, a 3D and augmented ­reality start-up that allows people to digitally replicate their products and digitally position them into spaces with a mobile device or headset.

Mr Duff, whose start-up is largely based out of Melbourne, likens the software to a cutting-edge presentation, which he said had become increasingly popular in sporting and entertainment industries as well as manufac­turing.

“There are people who need to communicate things with significant complexity and our technology allows them to do that,” Mr Duff said.

The Australian spoke to Mr Duff about the raise while trackside at the Australian Grand Prix in Melbourne last week.

Jigspace has landed a major partnership with Alfa Romeo that allows fans to view the Alfa Romeo Formula One car in their own garage via an app.

It is one of several new deals the business had struck with major companies of late, including Snap, as well as landing Medtronic, Panasonic, PepsiCo and Thermo Fisher Scientific as customers.

JigSpace founders Numa Bertron and Zac Duff. Picture: Supplied

The $5.2m round was led by existing investor venture capital firm Rampersand, with additional funding from Investible and Vulpes.

Rampersand co-founder Paul Naphtali said he believed Jigspace’s software could help businesses reduce costs while demonstrating certain products.

“Augmented reality has been a while coming, but in this environment where cost and efficiency is key, Jig is becoming business critical for companies with a product or prototype to demo, saving them money and increasing impact,” Mr Naphtali said.

“As an investor, we are hugely excited to see Jig as a productivity tool, which is where value really grows, and we know things are only just getting started.”

Asked why he went down the route of a bridging round rather than raise a Series B round, Mr Duff said it was partially due to the current economic environment. He was just about to fly to the US when the tech downturn began to hit in 2021.

Rather than try for a larger sum, he said a small amount was all that was needed to provide working capital and to continue to develop the Jigspace product.

Jigspace’s last raise, a Series A, arrived in 2021 when Investible, Vulpes Investment Management and Roger Allen tipped a combined $6m into the business.

Behind several new partnerships with Jigspace were technology-focused millennials, who were increasingly moving into management positions, Mr Duff said.

“All of our successful users have usually had some interaction with augmented reality before they knew about us,” he said.

“It’s the people who are willing to apply technology to their problems who are increasingly becoming customers, and those people are typically millennials.”

Alfa Romeo head of marketing Stefano Battiston said the company had used Jigspace’s software to sell an ad this year, showing the advertiser how the logo would appear on its F1 car during the race.

“We’ve recently expanded the use of Jigspace’s software to more of its departments. Our sales team uses it to close multimillion-dollar sponsorship deals by showcasing our branding opportunities in incredible detail,” Mr Battiston said.