The Hiranandani Group has entered the technology-led consumer services space with the launch of its new venture Tez Platforms. The company is looking at building content-driven offerings for e-sports, gaming and social media space in the first phase with a target investment around ₹1,000 crore this year.
Eventually, the platform will expand into e-commerce, personal mobility, artificial intelligence and blockchain linked solutions.
Darshan Hiranandani, CEO, Hiranandani Group, told BusinessLine, “This is the next level of natural evolution for us. We are growing at a great pace on our B2B side with the real state cum tech business. For the new venture, we are working on some projects with the team from the real estate and Yotta Infrastructure side. We can get our first project off the ground this calendar year. We are making this announcement to tell that we are ready in this space and would like ecosystem partners and talent to approach us.”
“Some key hires and senior management team will be announced over the next few weeks. There are numerous opportunities we looked at, but we are starting with gaming and the social media space. In terms of content, we believe gaming is going to be the first sector to offer immersive experience. NFTs too could be interesting. The other area we are working on is consumption of e-sports—whether we can have e-sports arena in real estate,” he added.
Hiranandani didn’t share further details on the products being developed or the end product being readied for the market at the moment.
The company is looking to hire dedicated specialised talent for this platform which will operate as a separate entity without getting distracted from the core real estate business.
While Hiranandani is not exploring acquisitions to develop the product at this stage, he added that Tez Platforms could partner with several companies and even license technologies.
Open to Metaverse
Though he calls it too early at industry level to bet on metaverse offerings, but the platform will be flexible enough to accommodate and build on if metaverse truly takes off.
He said, “A company like ours is usually focused on things which have large enough applications set or we develop something which will have larger applications in the forceable future. Metaverse is important as long as it offers flexibility to the platform.”
The company might operate on both B2B and B2C side. “It would be a bit of both B2B and B2C. It could be working with B2B partners to create B2C outcomes. We can work with mobile gaming companies to build physical arenas. Business models are still being decided, it’s very early at the moment,” Hiranandani said.
Investment timeline
“We have a roadmap to launch two highly sought-after services in 2022, followed by another three in the next year. Tez Platforms will leverage synergies and talent from various Hiranandani Group entities but also has aggressive plans to hire over 250 employees in FY 2022. Tez’s initial outlay to launch the services this year will be approximately ₹1,000 crore. And over the next 2-3 years, we expect to invest approximately ₹3,500 crore,” he said.
Hiranandani, however, added that the company will not look for strategic third-party investors at the moment and will observe how the product plays out in the market.
Published on
February 14, 2022
