India’s top IT services firms are working on embedding various technologies to tap the Metaverse market, which is estimated to provide a $8 trillion opportunity, as per global investment bank Goldman Sachs. Conventionally, India’s software service exports have been in consulting and IT infrastructure services, but Indian companies have now expanded their offerings to deep tech like Artificial Intelligence, data analytics and augmented/ virtual reality as part of Web3.0 or Metaverse
Embedded technologies to create an alternate reality for clients can help unlock huge value for Indian IT companies, especially in a new normal where work, education, and some health services have shifted to a remote model, according to industry experts.
Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), India’s largest IT services company, has already made its initial investment in the Metaverse.
"It’s an emerging area, and it is something that we've been piloting and investing in a lot. We have a very strong research and development organisation wherein they work on the frontier areas of technology and Metaverse is one of them. We have executed several proof of concepts and use cases at this point in time as to how that could change the world of business. Metaverse coupled with 5G and 6G technologies is going to revolutionise the way we do business," N Ganapathy Subramaniam, Chief Operating Officer and Executive Director of TCS, told BusinessToday.In in an emailed statement.
TCS' rival Infosys is also betting big on digital services. In response to a question during Q3 earnings call, Infosys CEO Salil Parekh had said that the company has a tremendous focus on modernisation, including building on native cloud.
“So really the technology, digital transformation is the centre of what we are seeing with clients and in that, we feel extremely well-positioned, because that is truly the strength of Infosys. Our delivery engine is extremely robust, and we have a portfolio capability of services which are focused on cloud and digital which are helping our clients to transform. Of course, consulting is a critical part as it helps to build the framework for these transformations, and the vast majority of what clients end up doing after the initial consulting is taking the technology spend in making all that work," he had said.
Meanwhile, HCL Technologies expects extended reality (XR) to scale up in few years.
“With our experience of working with several customers from aerospace, automotive, manufacturing, and hi-tech companies, we observe XR adoption across use cases such as training, product development, repair, and maintenance, to name a few. Some of these use cases have established the return on investment ROI and are all set to scale in the years to come. We also strongly believe that companies obsessed with redefining customer experience must make XR-supported service a part of their mainstream. Nevertheless, there is a huge optimism and excitement toward the adoption of this technology in solving business challenges," HCL Tech Vice President Ravisankar Venkatachalam and Associate General Manager Sanjeeb Behera said in a recent blogpost.
According to Nandkishor Dalvi, Territory Manager at ELGi Equipment, Web 3.0 will change the way the Internet works in the coming decade.
"Web 2.0 has been successful for many companies like Facebook, Youtube, Google and they have changed the way the internet used to operate. But one problem that persists is that everything is still centralised in the hand of these companies,” Dalvi wrote in a LinkedIn post.
"Web 3.0 is claiming to be addressing the concerns of centralisation by giving control in the hands of the user and making the ecosystem more decentralised. Companies like Decentraland, Sandbox have already started building Metaverse gaming platforms where the control lies in the hand of the users," he added.