By Shafeer Badharudeen, VP, Growth and Advisory | Enquero – A Genpact Company-
It was a regular weekend when my daughter overheard conversations with my friends on Metaverse, Non-Fungible Tokens (NFTs), and their possibilities in our industry. Just like any curious middle schooler, she had questions. And don’t we all.
Metaverse and NFTs are the most trending buzzwords in our digital-driven industries. Metaverse worlds will gather an active user base of $300-$500 million by 2025. Gartner predicts that by 2026, at least 25% of people will spend one hour per day in the metaverse. These data points suggest that the world will shapeshift into something exceptional for every young adult in the years to come.
But before we dive any deeper, let’s touch upon the key drivers and foundations that propelled our journey towards this realm.
The human need for novelty and collaboration
Humans have a laundry list of wants. This list comprises education, entertainment, and social collaboration with hyper interactivity that releases your happy hormones to make life exciting. And these wants are constantly changing, encouraging our civilization to transition from physical touchpoint-based customer interactions to digital infrastructure, platforms, and channels. With improved commoditization of goods and services, experience delivery has become the critical differentiating catalyst for building brand loyalty. But the constraints of a two-dimensional plane remain.
The foundation stage of the metaverse is set. Social platforms are more collaborative and provide novel experiences. And let’s not forget the gaming industry. In the last few years, we have come face to face with mind-boggling experience transformation through virtual reality, augmented reality, mixed reality, extended reality, and everything in between. Digital assets, blockchain-based financial transaction models, and crypto tokens have seeped into metaverse’s digital commerce. Tokenizing real-world transactions are taking us a step closer to the boundaries of the metaverse.
Metaverse converges the real and the virtual
Metaverse sits at the intersection of collaboration capabilities and governance through intelligent knowledge graph modeling, virtual and extended realities, and blockchain technologies. This extended universe allows second lives to both humans and businesses. Businesses can extend their market coverage and reach. Meta humans or avatars with teleportation capabilities will open new and exciting realities for the minds. Ground-breaking technologies can meet the needs and expectations of demand generators (consumers) and demand fulfillers (businesses).
Our lives and business will change forever
Professional jobs will evolve to serve global customers. Businesses with a presence in the metaverse will create new roles and titles to deliver close to actual life experiences. You can expect a real transformational change in how jobs are defined, visualized, perceived, and practiced.
Digital twins and IoT technologies will percolate into social activities like coffee and breakfast with friends through integration with food delivery platforms. Virtual things in the metaverse will behave life-like to give a customized experience.
The education industry has always had the challenge of bringing the real-world learning experience to the learner. But things will change. A learner’s avatar will break the barriers of time and space to access meaningful and purpose-driven learning content. These three-dimensional visual experiences of the metaverse will give you front-row tickets to live lectures and discussions. Classrooms will ensure authentic full duplex communication, collaboration, and camaraderie between classmates and teachers. And before you know it, a kid from your block could be the next valedictorian in a virtual convocation ceremony.
The core industry segment that delivers the mainstream definition of experience and has a prominent role in the extended world is the media and entertainment (M&E) industry. Infrastructure, content, and collaboration are the three pillars of their strategy and strategy realization. In the metaverse, infrastructure and business models will build virtual theaters and concert centers. Content creation will include meta humans, metaverse venues, and crew members comprising 3D VR designers, programmers, design engineers, and AGILE experts. This will make content production faster with a whole virtual universe of promotions and advertisements cropping up.
Be prepared to be amazed and tread cautiously
Almost every life event that involves visuals, events, conversations, collaboration, and interactions will be redefined for our children in this world once metaverse achieves its 360-degree coverage of second life experience delivery. It will take years for it to operate glitch-free. But your next generation needs to be prepared for this experience that you got to live only through movies and science fiction. It is essential to accept these changes and cautiously guide young adults to make the right choices in an immersive world yet to be understood entirely.
