India could have a key role to play in building the metaverse. Here's why
来源:World Economic Forum;发表于:2022-04-28;人气指数:282
India
could have a key role to play in building the metaverse. Here's why
https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2022/03/india-could-build-metaverse/
So far, the most
vocal proponents of the metaverse are western tech companies. But with its
growing digital economy, India could be primed to help build it
Image: Still Pixels
for Pexels
07 Mar 2022
Ritwija Darbari
Community Specialist,
Business Engagement, India and South Asia, World Economic Forum
Stefan Brambilla Hall
Project Lead, Media,
Entertainment and Sport, World Economic Forum Geneva
This article first
appeared in Quartz India
*With its thriving
tech sector and culture of entrepreneurship, India is primed to help build the
metaverse.
*The Government of
India has been trying to foster a digital economy worth up to $1 trillion,
driven by a large and growing young population.
*Plans to create an
all-encompassing virtual reality environment pose new challenges for regulators
around the world.
The concept of the
metaverse is new and there is still considerable debate about how to
define it. All definitions, however, assume that extended reality (XR) – a
combination of augmented, virtual and mixed reality environments that are
accessible and interactive in real time – will be the entry point for the
metaverse. These technologies have been the harbinger of innovative
applications in fields such as gaming and entertainment, enterprise
solutions and simulations, as well as in military and defence.
In addition,
blockchain technology is presently expected to play a major role in building
the metaverse, because it permits verifiable claim of ownership and
transferability of digital assets. The vision seems to be that, together, XR
and blockchain will produce applications that increasingly blend our physical
and digital identities, enabling new forms of social and commercial
interaction.
Clearly, the
metaverse remains aspirational, but that hasn’t stopped companies across
the spectrum from making plans for engaging with it. The most vocal proponents
are western tech companies, even as the global discourse on the topic is
influenced by economic powerhouses such as China and South Korea.
But India also has a role to play in building the metaverse, and a range of
factors suggest it is primed to do so.
India: primed for the
metaverse
Since 2015, India has
risen almost 40 places in the Global Innovation Index, now ranking 46th in
the world. India also has a thriving culture of entrepreneurship, which has
recently experienced significant growth. Last year, a record 42 Indian
start-ups were valued over $1 billion – behind only the United States and
China in the creation of these ‘unicorns’. This environment is bolstered
by a set of favourable consumer trends, including rising disposable
income, increasing smartphone adoption and affordable mobile data.
The country is no
stranger to accelerating development and economic growth by leapfrogging to new
technologies, most famously in the case of its mobile phone revolution that
started in the late 1990s. The last decade has seen the creation of India
Stack, which is a combination of technology projects, including the national
digital identification and payments infrastructure, that together heralded a
new era of financial inclusion in the country.
The growth of digital
India is being fuelled by a large and growing young population. Much of this
demographic is deeply familiar with digital interaction and recreation. The use
of digital payment mechanisms has grown rapidly, reflecting a 75%
year-on-year growth from September 2019 to 2021, in the index developed by
the Reserve Bank of India to measure the penetration of digital payments in the
country.
Furthermore, consumption
of video streaming and gaming in India has been increasing at a scorching rate,
with reports suggesting the Indian gaming market will more than
triple to $7 billion by 2026. This growth in gaming has also boosted the
popularity of transmedia experiences, especially through the pandemic. Several
gaming platforms now provide virtual stages for concerts, exhibitions and brand
promotion, normalizing the idea that social and cultural experiences do not
have to take place exclusively in person.
The pandemic
accelerated the organic growth of users.
Image: Lumikai
These developments in
the country have been taking place within the broader context of the Government
of India trying to foster a digital economy worth up to $1 trillion. It has
developed incentives and policies for technologies and industries that could be
viewed as forming the building blocks of the metaverse. Its National
Blockchain Strategy was released in December 2021.
In addition to India’s
plans to use blockchain applications for e-governance, the most recent
Union Budget included a proposal for a blockchain-backed Digital Rupee, to
be issued by the Reserve Bank of India from 2022-23. The government has also
announced that it will conduct spectrum auctions to facilitate rollout of 5G
mobile services, which should accelerate demand for cloud applications –
including those for gaming and the metaverse. Realising the sector’s
potential for generating employment, the budget also created a task force to
explore how to enhance domestic capacity in the animation, visual effects,
gaming and comic (AVGC) sector.
The evolving
regulatory landscape
While the technical,
demographic and policy foundations for the metaverse appear to be present in
India, there remains the operational challenge of building the metaverse. If
India is to take a leading role, deal flows in the private sector will need to
accelerate. Indicators for this to date are promising: the 18 months to August
2021 saw over $1bn of capital infused in just the local video games ecosystem –
more than the preceding five years combined.
At the same time,
like many other countries across the world, India is debating how best to
regulate the technologies that will underpin the metaverse. The latest Union
Budget levies a 30% tax on income from transfers of Virtual Digital Assets
(VDAs), which could include cryptocurrencies and potentially non-fungible
tokens (NFTs). While the tax would imply recognition of crypto as an asset that
can be regulated, it does not legalise crypto ownership, which can be done
through due legislation.
Owning and trading
NFTs is believed to be a pathway towards a new digital economy, so this
will have consequences for the development of the metaverse. An NFT is a
digitally secured claim of ownership for a unique, non-interchangeable digital
asset and can link offline and online economic activity more strongly. For
example, a musician could create a song, release it digitally as an NFT and
incorporate a feature where they are paid a percentage each time it is
traded. This could support artists financially, ensuring they benefit from the
consumption and sale of their work in perpetuity, rather than as a one-off.
India’s move to tax
transfers of VDAs appears to recognise that people see value in NFTs, even if
it does not fully embrace ownership of them yet. Evangelists of the metaverse
argue that one is irrelevant without the other, suggesting the debate still has
a long way to go. Regardless, a lot remains to be decided before the aspiration
around NFTs can become a reality, but there is cautious optimism around the
potential for new business models to emerge.
Beyond crypto, the
metaverse also raises policy questions of how privacy and security should
be addressed. Online risks may be exacerbated in the metaverse, where unwanted
contact could become more intrusive and pervasive. Governance mechanisms for
virtual worlds would need to be supported with strengthening and scaling
efforts to promote digital literacy, safety and wellbeing so that participants
can engage meaningfully in online communities while consciously navigating
harmful content and behaviours.
Will the metaverse
bring about meta-governance?
Within the private
sector, these debates are encapsulated within a broader discussion of
the extent to which the metaverse should – or even can – be interoperable. A
number of open standards have been proposed for the metaverse, but the
incentives for adopting them appear to be outweighed by the interests of some
technology companies to maintain control. However, less attention is being paid
to the notion that interoperability could be made irrelevant without a
consistent regulatory policy landscape. If laws for monetising and moderating
the metaverse are made and applied differently around the world, is it possible
for a single metaverse to exist?
Nowhere is this more
apparent than in the varying attitudes to internet regulation today, summarised
by technology analyst Benedict Evans. Until recently, companies, products,
norms and rules originating in the west have dominated the policy agenda. But
with software and company creation and adoption diffusing around the world,
regulation is expanding with it.
The European Commission recently
called for further scrutiny of the development of the economic models of
the metaverse, suggesting that plans to create an all-encompassing virtual
reality environment would pose new challenges for antitrust regulators in the
EU. Prime Minister Narendra Modi, during his speech at the Davos Agenda 2022,
indicated that a collective and synchronized, global approach towards
addressing challenges with cryptocurrencies is needed.
In South Korea, the
Ministry of Science and ICT recently created a ‘metaverse alliance’ to
coordinate and facilitate the development of virtual and augmented reality
platforms. Meanwhile in China, a metaverse industry group, the Metaverse
Industry Committee, was formed under the state-supervised China Mobile
Communications Association, in December 2021. The committee has the stated
objectives of strengthening innovation and integration among metaverse
builders, organizing the training of professionals, and promoting new thinking.
Governments are
usually criticised for acting too late in addressing emerging technologies and
their implications for business, society and politics, so such developments
should be welcomed. One thing is for certain, the Indian tech governance and
regulatory policy landscape is going to be an evolving one, as global best
practices also inform key decisions to be taken by policymakers.