IT startup Rumine Corporation’s training simulation product Techism grabbed gold in the Digital Content Category of the ASEAN ICT Awards (AICTA) 2021.
Techism was the sole winner out of four entries from Brunei, and were selected after a pitch to a panel of industry-leading judges from Japan and China last month.
The award is the latest feather in the cap for the award winning, youth-led startup, who previously swept the Brunei and Asia Pacific ICT Alliance awards, while also earning top accolades last year from DARe’s Accelerate programme and the LiveWIRE Brunei Business Awards.
Rumine’s Techism is a virtual reality training tool for learning to utilise heating, ventilation, and air conditioning (HVAC) systems. Similar to Rumine’s other products, Techism allows trainees in the field to virtually practice assembly and other mechanical processes seamlessly using hand motion sensors.
Rumine’s founders said virtual training tools can help gauge and improve competency levels in a safe environment, acting as a precursor or supplemental tool to real-world training.
“Currently Techism is for HVAC systems but we are working on adding more trainings onto our software-as-a-service platform where everyone, not just those in Brunei, can go to our marketplace and do any training that is offered on the platform,” said co-founder and CEO Sarinah Ziziumiza.
She added that Techsim would be released within the year after final validation from industry experts.
Rumine earned six figures last year, driven mostly by developing training and educational content for established players in the public and private sector.
Sarinah Ziziumiza said clients engage them to develop extended reality (XR) experiences utilising Augmented Reality (AR), VR – or sometimes a mix of both – to virtually prepare people for offline scenarios.
Major projects include safety VR simulations for the Safety, Health, and Environment National Authority (SHENA); an online techwork learning portal for the Institute of Brunei Technical Education; and AR learning books with gamification for the Ministry of Education.
Rumine was officially established in 2020, though its founding four members have been working together on IT projects since 2018, leveraging on each other’s individual strengths.
“The four of us come from different backgrounds; I’m into teaching pedagogy, researching, and engineering. My partner (and sister) Nursheila’s background is in information systems, while Laila (Lailatun Najihah Ahmad Humaizi) is under media content and Hafeez (Ak Hafeezur Rahman Pg Hj Ramlee) is in software development,” said Sarinah.
The founding members credited various tech and entrepreneurship programmes they participated in helping them develop their technical and business acumen.
These include the Brunei ICT Awards (BICTA) Plus Bootcamp and more recently the Tech Immersion Programme, a six months post-BICTA mentorship programme starting in December 2021. They were also part of the seventh cycle of DARe’s flagship startup development programme Accelerate.
Brunei’s other AICTA entries this year were the Land Transport Department’s Road Accident Data Enhancement and Development under the Public Sector category and NiAT’s Observe and ITPSS’s Facehunter under the Private Sector category.
