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Herman Narula (born April 1988) is a British Indian businessman and the co-founder and CEO of Improbable Worlds Limited, a British multinational technology company founded in 2012. It makes distributed simulation software enabling virtual worlds for video games, defence organisations and metaverse environments.

Early life

Narula was born in April 1988, in Delhi, India, before his family moved to the UK when he was three years old. He is the son of Harpinder Singh Narula, who runs DSC Ltd, the family construction business, and Surina Narula, a prominent philanthropist devoted to children's rights and other social and environmental causes. He has two older brothers, Anhad and Manhad, who work for DSC.

He was educated at Haberdashers' Aske's Boys' School, Elstree, and Girton College, Cambridge, where he studied computer science.

He first became interested in video games at the age of seven, beginning with the game Magic Carpet; he began coding at the age of 12, in C++. Narula has said that his parents did not limit his screen time in childhood.

Narula met his Improbable co-founder Rob Whitehead while studying computer science at Girton College. Both shared an interest in gaming and a belief that video games held an unrecognised importance in the wider world; both were averse to a career in finance.  

Career

Narula and Whitehead started Improbable with backing from the Narula family and a group of American and European investors. In May 2017 the company attracted a further $502 million of investment from Softbank, valuing the company  $1 billion. In 2020 The Telegraph Tech 100 estimated Narula's net worth at £450 million.

Narula has criticised efforts made by traditional technology platforms to control the metaverse. In 2019 Narula gave a speech at TED Global titled "The Transformative Power of Video Games", arguing that games are an egalitarian medium through which millions of people may co-inhabit the same space, develop life skills and make human connections. In an interview with Games Industry Biz, Narula said "Hypothetically, one day, if 100m, or 1 billion, people entered simultaneously into a virtual world, that would cease to be a game - that would be a country."  In 2019 he gave Girton College's Founders Enterprise Lecture, titled “Virtual Worlds: The Next Great Wilderness”.

Narula believes that earning a living in the metaverse will become a routine activity, and that computer simulation could be "steel for the 21st century", with every major infrastructure project requiring some form of digital twin. He sees the metaverse also becoming an extension of real-world culture into the digital economy.

He has argued that the metaverse cannot be owned or controlled solely by a narrow group of corporations, and that value created in the metaverse should be shared with community members.  In a 2022 interview with The Times, he said: “We need to get comfortable with the idea that this is not really about companies, it’s about communities. And those communities need to decide the rules, of what sort of things are acceptable and what is not.”

Publications

Narula is the author of Virtual Society: The Metaverse and the New Frontiers of Human Experience, (Penguin Random House, October 2022).

The book considers the metaverse in the context of the human instinct to derive meaning and purpose from conceptual communities. Narula argues that humans have always sought to live in some form of virtual world.  He cites examples from ancient history and contemporary culture, such as the Egyptian concept of the afterlife that gave rise to the pyramids, through to the enduring popularity of movie franchises and fantasy league sports, which for some inhabitants may equal the physical world for fulfilment, trust, and economic trade. Narula believes the metaverse may eventually foster transhumanism, but also that a true brain/computer interface is a distant prospect. The book features endorsements from Marc Andreessen, Arianna Huffington and Adam Grant.

Personal life

Narula lives in the Narula family home in Barnet, North London.  

He supports Plan International, which advocates for children’s rights and equality for girls.

In interview Narula named Ronald Ayme's The Roman Revolution as his favourite book and Gladiator his favourite film. He follows Arsenal football team and attends matches at the Emirates Stadium. He speaks English and Hindi, and is friends with Demis Hassabis, the DeepMind founder.

Narula meditates daily.

In 2017 he was nominated for The Sunday Times' Business Person of the Year.  In 2018 he was named to the Maserati 100 list of notable entrepreneurs; he does not own a car, preferring Uber.

References

1. "Herman NARULA - Personal Appointments (free information from Companies House)". Beta.companieshouse.gov.uk. 11 July 2012. Retrieved 13 May 2017.
2. ^ "Meet Improbable, The Startup Building The World's Most Powerful Simulations". Forbes.com. Retrieved 12 May 2017.
3. ^ Susannah Butter (30 May 2017). "Meet the man who's about to turn London into a virtual reality playground | London Evening Standard". Standard.co.uk. Retrieved 19 June 2017.
4. "The 'Otherness' Of Living". Verve Magazine. 18 August 2008. Retrieved 18 November 2020.
5. ^ Amit Roy. "Eye on England: Herman Narula and his Improbable story, Dear Dad, Abir's sequel and Tittle tattle". telegraphindia.com. Archived from the original on 2 August 2017. Retrieved 1 August 2017.
6. Solon, Olivia (29 May 2014). "The Improbable dream to radically transform online gaming | WIRED UK". Wired.co.uk. Retrieved 12 May 2017.
7. "Telegraph Tech Hot 100: The full 2020 list revealed". The Telegraph. 28 October 2020. ISSN 0307-1235. Retrieved 30 October 2020.
8. ""We must prevent Facebook from running the metaverse": Herman Narula on the fight for a new reality". New Statesman. 15 November 2021. Retrieved 8 March 2022.
9. "Herman Narula on why the metaverse matters". The Economist. ISSN 0013-0613. Retrieved 8 March 2022.
10. "Welcome to the Metaverse on Apple Podcasts". Apple Podcasts. Retrieved 8 August 2022.
11. Arlidge, John. "My metaverse is better than yours, Mark Zuckerberg". The Times. ISSN 0140-0460. Retrieved 2 August 2022.
12. "Herman Narula: How Improbable put 4,500 Bored Apes in the same metaverse space". VentureBeat. 3 August 2022. Retrieved 8 August 2022.
13. Poole, Steven (22 September 2022). "From Meatspace to Metaverse: Two Books on Virtual Reality". Wall Street Journal. ISSN 0099-9660. Retrieved 12 October 2022.
14. Dimoska, Elena (6 February 2023). "Moving into the metaverse | Interview with Herman Narula, Co-Founder and CEO Improbable". EU-Startups. Retrieved 12 February 2023.
15. "Why Improbable's Herman Narula believes virtual society will foster transhumanism". VentureBeat. 3 November 2022. Retrieved 8 November 2022.
16. ^ Duke, Simon. "Herman Narula: Let me take you inside the Matrix". The Times. ISSN 0140-0460. Retrieved 8 March 2022.

• 1988 births
• Alumni of Girton College, Cambridge
• Living people
• People educated at Haberdashers' Boys' School
• People from Hertfordshire
• Indian emigrants to the United Kingdom
• British company founders
• Naturalised citizens of the United Kingdom