Business Trendspotting: Metaverse: Metaverse gives plenty of opportunities for brands to integrate, interact with the community of customers, followers and engage. Product companies can use the Metaverse to share innovative ideas, co create advanced concepts and prototypes with potential users

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• This can accelerate the cycle of product development and help in predicting whether any innovation would be successful or not.

• In fact, Metaverse provides the space for companies to offer an extremely personalised, yet interactive experience and a great marketing opportunity.

• The metaverse can play a huge role in customer retention, customer engagement for almost any business by taking their customers through the brand’s journey around the virtual immersive experience.

  Industry Applications

  Entertainment

  • Sports leagues, musicians, artists and content creators
  • Virtual gaming
  • Virtual concerts
  • NFTs
  • Using Virtual Reality for Immersive Movie and TV consumption being a prominent use case, as well as use of AR and VR for advertising in Print, Out-of-Home and Social Media to drive immersion and customer engagement

  Business Operations

  • A company’s product development, operations management and testing can be simulated and verified in the virtual space before a physical release.
  • Decision making and results can be recorded using blockchain and these records can be used later for assessment and audits.

  Education

  • In-person interactions and physical mentoring can be facilitated in the metaverse with the help of advanced AR and VR technologies.
  • A mix of collaboration and communication could help in improving learning outcomes.
  • Students’ decision-making abilities can also be enhanced through small tasks and games and by providing them with points for completing the same
  • Use Cases- Course material shifting to truly immersive multimedia learning through smart devices instead of 2D textbook learning, in specific scenarios where the live environment is dangerous to learn in, trainings and education can be imparted using VR leading to safe learning

  Workspace

  • Colleagues will now be able to interact in a 3D space within the comfort of their houses.
  • Presentations could become a lot more flexible and interesting.
  • The process of onboarding employees would also become more interactive with virtual tours of offices and 360-degree views

  Marketing

  • If marketing companies start adopting the metaverse now, they will be ahead of their competitors.
  • Brands can also leverage the metaverse to create a virtual world for their loyal customers in order to retain them.
  • The reach of the target audience will now be extended to 3D and VR platforms

  Real estate

  • Land sales by major shareholders in the metaverse land business already reached a record value of USD 619 million in 2021.
  • The metaverse will redefine the value of virtual land and deprioritise factors like size, real utility and location
  • Use cases- digital twinning of apartments, preview of furniture setting through AR and 360 degree navigation

  Retail

  • By serving as a virtual platform that replicates the in-store experience, the metaverse would help in reducing investments and costs required to maintain physical stores and employees.
  • These benefits will enable brands to increase their value and convert visitors into customers, which is a challenge with a 2D website.
  • Use Cases- Virtual Changing Rooms, Appbased Tryouts, Social Media integration for feedback, Guided Experience AR-based Location Maps, In-Store Walking Directions etc. for guided purchasing/buying, with no requirements to travel to the construction site, the reach is virtually limitless; buyers can experience sitting in a different geography

  Architecture

  • Interior design projects in the metaverse will ensure full integration of buildings and objects from the real world in the virtual one.
  • Designing in the metaverse would reduce manufacturing costs and time required for both architects and customers while enabling better visualisation.
  • Optimising the material, colour and shape of an object will become less time consuming than it is with the 2D visualisation techniques currently used.

  Healthcare

  • The digital twin will be capable of collecting the patient’s medical state, vitals, response to a drug given, therapy, and information about the surrounding environment.
  • This data will be stored in the cloud and can be iteratively monitored by the doctor.
  • AI and ML technologies would then be able to predict precautionary measures and treatments

  Agriculture

  • The metaverse will help people acquire related agricultural skills and generate interest in the field.
  • At the same time, AR/VR technologies would help in tracking growth-related data on plants.
  • Real-time monitoring of plant biology, data and progress will make agriculture tracking possible anywhere and anytime.
  • Farmers can now be trained from any location in the world without the necessity of physical presence

  Creator Economy

  • Brands and creators can work collaboratively to capitalise on the metaverse, which offers numerous opportunities to creators who independently create content for brands.
  • They can monetise their content and leverage the platform to increase their following by designing and publicising their content.
  • Digital token-based fan clubs would enable creators to earn a bonus through every subscriber as subscribers would use community tokens to buy special features, attend meetings and gain other benefits related to the creator’s community.

  Fashion

  • They can get a 360-degree view as well as zoom in on digital copies of garments.
  • Many companies are already experimenting with virtual trials where users can select their body type and see how a particular piece of clothing would look on them

  Manufacturing

  • Low-latency remote control with the help of technologies like 5G will enable factory workers to collaborate, create new designs and correct errors in real-time without the need for on-site attention.
  • With the help of VR headsets, autonomous driving will see greater precision by capturing emotions more easily and accurately

  Social media

  • Oculus has launched “Social Beta” software that enables people to watch online video services Twitch and Vimeo in a virtual cinema with other people.
  • It has also shown off Toybox, a prototype virtual toy-room where two people can interact with a range of objects together.
  • AltspaceVR wants people to “be together in a more natural way than a phone call, text or video chat” by creating avatars and wandering around its virtual worlds, and is available for some headsets already.

  Sports and Music

  • NextVR is focusing on sport and entertainment, and has already worked on the US Open tennis tournament and several boxing matches, as well as a live Coldplay gig
  • Another company, Voke, is working with stars including Ricky Martin and Marc Anthony, while LiveLike wants to broadcast sports matches in VR for friends to watch together while chatting.
  • British broadcaster Sky recently launched a Google Cardboard app, which includes a sports show fronted by David Beckham alongside news reports and videos from Disney and Star Wars.

  Tourism

  • You can already use VR to climb Everest, explore the Grand Canyon, take a gondola ride in Venice and watch a range of startling 360-degree videos published by wearable-cameras firm GoPro from around the world.
  • Looking even further afield, Mars 2030 will let you wander around the surface of Mars.

  Adult Entertainment

  • From point-of-view videos to animated sex simulations – and even a dedicated VR category on popular site PornHub – if there’s money to be made from virtual reality, chances are the adult-entertainment industry will find it first.

  Automobile

  • Vehicle Experience in the form of Product Variations (AR), Driving Experience (VR)
  • Guided repair and maintenance of vehicles for service staff
  • Manufacturing support through augmented reality as well as trainings for crew members
  • Assisting drivers by Digital Overlays of important information such as Speed, Turns etc. through HUD as the number of cars increase

Key Principles

Decentralisation

• A decentralised system that is powered by Web 3.0, it focuses on ensuring equal ownership as well as control among stakeholders to reduce censorship and increase diversity.
• NFTs, which will be minted in the metaverse’s open ecosystem with its well-defined blockchain structure, could support this decentralised approach.

Property Rights

• People will have complete ownership over purchases made in the virtual world.
• Moreover, they can take these virtual assets anywhere they wish to and freely trade them.
• This right to property can be enforced with the help of cryptography, NFTs and blockchain

Self-sovereign

• User privacy can be protected, making them potentially less vulnerable to data and identity theft than they are under centralised platforms.
• By enabling the use of wallets and services as means of identity verification and eliminating intermediaries, the metaverse contributes to a more secure and rich concept of digital identity

Composability

• The metaverse will have the ability to mix and match software components.
• It supports the concept of reusability where once a component is written, it can be reused again.

Open Source

• When creators and developers have unrestricted access to and full control over a platform, it results in more innovation.
• Open-source software helps in eliminating information asymmetries and improving governance

Ownership

• It is based on the principle of community ownership where creators, builders, investors and users come together, interact and build the platform.
• Blockchains and cryptocurrencies have enabled a more flexible and democratic approach to governance

Social Immersion

• The pandemic has created a greater demand for immersive experiences.
• People have moved beyond traditional texts and emails with platforms like video conferencing and telepresence tools.

Technologies

3D Modelling

• High-resolution 3D models which can be modified and rotated 360 degrees would be required.
• Access to these models would have to be made fairly easy so that one can import objects into the metaverse and share them with other users

Hardware

• To enjoy a 360-degree experience and immersive integration between the virtual and physical worlds, we need AR hardware.
• Using optic technology that blurs the lines between the real and virtual, such hardware enables natural interactions between users

Cryptocurrency

• A cryptocurrency can track the value of a digital asset and its returns over time.
• Users will be able to trade, shop and play in the virtual world using cryptocurrencies, which make transactions safe, private, and untraceable.

AR/VR

• With VR glasses, which are continuously evolving, users can experience the metaverse without having to leave their homes.

5G

• 5G technologies are needed to support interactions in the virtual space.
• Symmetrical bandwidth will help remote real-time rendering, video compression, spectrum advocacy and cross-layer visibility, which are essential features for running the metaverse smoothly.

Edge Computing

• It enables Applications, especially those with AR/VR capabilities, to respond in real time
• Edge computing needs to be a part of the larger cloud interface

AI

• AI will make the metaverse inclusive by creating experiences that enable people with disabilities to access the immersive virtual world.
• It will benefit not only people who are techno-savvy but also those with low digital capacity.
• AI can capture user actions, thus making it easier to suggest adaptable responses and actions.
• Image recognition, automatic translation, intelligent exoskeletons and brain-computer interfaces are some AI-driven technologies that can help achieve this level of experience.

Benefits

Opportunities