EXCLUSIVE: In talks with over 120 brands for metaverse, says PartyNite's Rajat Ojha

EXCLUSIVE: In talks with over 120 brands for metaverse, says PartyNite's Rajat Ojha

Rajat Ojha, CEO and founder of PartyNite (India’s first metaverse platform), in an exclusive conversation with Business Today, talks about how the entertainment industry can leverage metaverse, the potential for the technology and the company’s plans going forward.

EXCLUSIVE: In talks with over 120 brands for metaverse, says PartyNite's Rajat Ojha
Nidhi Singal
  • Jul 20, 2022,
  • Updated Jul 20, 2022, 5:11 PM IST

A big user of technology, the entertainment industry globally is embracing metaverse much faster than any other industry. India isn’t far behind with an increasing number of artists and media houses jumping into the metaverse space. Rajat Ojha, CEO and founder of PartyNite (India’s first metaverse platform), in an exclusive conversation with Business Today, talks about how the entertainment industry can leverage metaverse, the potential for the technology and the company’s plans going forward. Edited Experts.

BT: Can metaverse transform the entertainment industry in India?

RO: Absolutely, there are various factors which work in favour of metaverse when it comes to entertainment. The first is creator’s economy as artists [can] directly communicate and interact with the audience. This completely nullifies the roles of the mediators and helps build a strong audience base. Second is the virtual Shows/Concerts where millions of people can fit in one single place. Artists can interact directly with the fans - be it at launch events, parties or concerts. Since it’s a virtual platform and not geography sensitive, it's highly scalable.

Metaverse can also be used for interactive trailers. Trailers have been unidirectional consumption channels so far where fans watch the trailer and get done with it. Imagine being in the world of the cinema where you don’t watch but participate in the trailer. You see things happening all around you and have the possibility of giving high fives to the stars of the movies and what not. You can visit the sets of the movie. It's far more immersive and audiences will get a level-up experience.

Others include massively interactive live events, which we are already working on. And NFTs. However, the current phase of NFT is heavily affected by a lot of lame use cases but in the longer run, NFTs are here to stay and will provide a great way of monetising to the artists directly.

Don’t forget the sports industry in the entertainment space and that’s where immersion, fan moments, voting, entertainment, celebration and watching together will work like a charm.

BT: Are the next generation digital entertainment, media and entertainment companies thinking about the metaverse and how people will socialise around entertainment?

RO: Absolutely. Not just the next generation but veteran production houses and media companies are working with us on various use cases of using Metaverse as the core concept of socialising within their ecosystem powered by metaverse.

BT: Does metaverse have the potential to personalise entertainment and how?

RO: This is the most interesting aspect of the metaverse, it’s social yet it’s personalised. You can be together with thousands of people watching the same thing but what you do and how you interact and how it changes the outcomes are absolutely personalised. Even for artists, it’s their identity directly interacting with the audience which is way more personal than what it has ever been.

BT: How easy or difficult is it to create these virtual spaces and the user interaction that mimics the real world?

RO: Building the platform is a long journey but the beauty of any platform is that once it’s ready, it’s easy to replicate various such spaces and interactions. PartyNite took 2.5 years in making but that gives us the ability to host events of huge magnitude also in a matter of weeks if not days. A lot is going on under the hood which enables the platform today like blockchain, communication layer, AI-based avatar creation system, AI-based animations and many such. PartyNite is powered by Unreal Engine and runs on our chain built using Cosmos SDK. Hardware-wise we are very light and we run on even low-end android phones and PCs. We are releasing our iOS and Mac version next month. We are VR enabled but don’t make it mandatory because of the lack of VR penetration in India.

BT: How successful has PartyNite been and what are the future plans?

RO: We are completely stoked to see the huge response we are getting. We are already working with over 40 brands/celebs for various engagements, land sales, etc. and are in advanced talks with over 120 brands. Even for our maiden concert, we did with Daler Mehndi, we expected to see 50,000 people inside PartyNite but witnessed 800,000 people inside our platform and millions watching from live streams. We have successfully proven various use cases with concerts, stand-up comedy, launch events with the Telangana Government, interactive theme-based games, land sales, cinema halls, mall experiences and many others and have been successful in each one of these. We are working on our B2C approach and a metagame is being built to directly engage with the community, we already have our party creator which will allow anybody to host their own party on our platform, we are building our NFT marketplace and also hosting various events with brands.

BT: How big is the metaverse market in entertainment – globally and in India? Where is it expected to reach in the next five years?

RO: Globally metaverse in the entertainment market is expected to increase by $28.92 billion from 2021 to 2026, with an accelerated CAGR of 8.55 per cent as per the latest market report by Technavio. The Indian entertainment industry is booming by many folds and metaverse will be an integral part of it.

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