Metaverse acts as catalyst providing creative freedom to brands in creating meaningful experiences

Deloitte India released a report titled ‘Metaverse: The hype, possibilities, and beyond’ at the Internet and Mobile Association of India (IAMAI)’s 18^th Marketing Conclave.

Three themes emerge prominently from the released report:

Web 3.0 accelerating creator’s economy, talent and digital transformation

One of the key drivers is the economic possibilities within Metaverse is driven by Web 3.0’s ability to spur digital transformation and creator economy. Given India’s younger generation's inclination towards tech consumption, Deloitte India anticipates an increase in demand for digital products and immersive and elevated experiences.

Metaverse will therefore act as a catalyst providing creative freedom to brands and businesses to use and secure meaningful experiences generating employability, training and focus on customer experience capabilities.

With immersive experience as its core offering, the media, entertainment, and gaming industry are expected to take a lead in the adoption journey of this new architecture which will boost the talent pool of India in a big way.

Jehil Thakkar, Partner and Media and Entertainment sector leader, Deloitte India, said, The metaverse will serve as a key enabler for the Indian media and entertainment sector opening newer avenues for India's vast talent pool in engineering, graphics, video, and animation. Together with a new digital vision of the Government and new applications made possible through 5G, India's talent pool has the potential to make the country a key centre for metaverse-related technologies and innovation”.

Metaverse: Adoption of technologies will mean traversing challenges and risks to sustain business in a dynamic marketplace

• Growth in the Metaverse adoption in India and elsewhere depends on the economic and technological barriers to the underlying technologies.
• The scale of adoption also will be driven by the cost of compatible devices (VR, headsets, smart wearables) and the ability to develop technical skills and readiness.
• To service the evolving consumer base and consumption patterns, technical feasibility, industry-defining precedents, and regulatory approaches could be the primary drivers of adoption.
• With immersive experience as its core offering, the media, entertainment, and gaming industry will lead the adoption journey. Industries, such as fashion, consumer durables, real estate, retail and e-commerce, banking, health care, and manufacturing may take a phased approach in adopting certain components of Metaverse and gradually expand the offerings.
• Advocating a whole new world of possibilities through Metaverse, the report debates how the tectonic shift in the composition of consumer demography will at one end necessitate a change in business operations whilst at the other shall pose critical challenges including affordability, regulatory uncertainty, safety, and security issues.

Ashvin Vellody, Partner, Consulting, Deloitte India, said, “The next wave of digital transformation is a set of technologies that define customer experience and connectivity to enable decentralisation. The Metaverse provides one such path forward where AR-VR, other OEMs, and device-independent technologies aim to create a virtual world full of rich experiences. Businesses will continue to adopt these technologies if it enables their vision to provide the best customer experience at a reasonable cost.”

Metaverse opens up a world of new possibilities - A preview

The success of Metaverse penetration will depend on the time organisations take to understand its relevance to their business and the pace of this ecosystem’s development. The ability to ramp up the technical skills and readiness, and deal with rising cyber threats will be critical to its adoption.

Seeing the possibilities for transforming governance through Metaverse and bolstering the ecosystem, many governments across the world have also announced their intent to use Metaverse in sustaining a favourable climate for technology

Key use cases have been seen across diverse sectors such as fashion, consumer durables, real estate, retail and e-commerce, banking, health care and manufacturing.

For instance:

• Metaverse assisting the healthcare sector.
• Metaverse and loyalty programmes.
• Metaverse for Enterprises.
• Metaverse and customer experience.

However, the determinants for the adoption of Metaverse will be unique to every industry and the adoption levels may vary depending on the use cases satiating the applicability framework. Affordability, regulatory uncertainty, safety, and security are some of the key challenges in the adoption of Metaverse

Sreeram Ananthasayanam, Partner, Deloitte India, said, “The success of Metaverse penetration will depend on organisations digital maturity to tap into its core levers of phygital immersive experience, trust layer, economic infrastructure, creator economy etc to their business and the pace of development of the surrounding ecosystem. Based on the growing awareness of its application possibilities, organizations are likely to reorganize their business to take advantage of this evolving technology to address the needs of an evolving digital native generation.

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