Tata group’s jewellery arm Tanishq recently launched its new collection in the metaverse where guests could try on bespoke pieces virtually. The company is also working on a solution to launch a museum metaverse for the Tamil Nadu government, said Ashok Maharaj, Head, TCS XR Lab.
“We are engaged with different companies of the Tata group, including Tata Motors,
, Tanishq and Croma on immersive solutions and digital twins. We expect to see significant traction on metaverse-related solutions and technologies in the coming months,” Maharaj told ET.
Last month, Jaguar Land Rover, a subsidiary of Tata Motors, announced the launch of its open innovation platform that will build a mobility ecosystem incorporating the metaverse.
Other Tata brands like Tata Tea have also been tapping the metaverse for product launches.
“We have been seeing RFPs (requests for proposal) and clients asking us specifically on how they can implement some of these immersive technologies for training as well as sales and marketing. We are also looking for solutions for the film industry to see if we can actually support them in many of the launches of some of the musicals in the metaverse,” Maharaj said.
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The company is also partnering with a number of Big Tech companies in facilitating both hardware and software solutions in the metaverse and related areas.
TCS’ Avapresence solution platform built on solutions like cloud, blockchain, Artificial Intelligence and Internet of Things is the key metaverse offering. It uses core XR (extended reality) elements that together enable the creation and functioning of different Avapresence components.
The metaverse could provide market opportunities of up to $800 billion by 2024, according to Bloomberg Intelligence.
Apart from TCS, Indian IT leaders like
, , , , and , among others, have also big plans in this area with most of these companies having established co-innovation platforms specifically for metaverse use cases.
Infosys also recently launched Infosys Foundry, covering over 100 use cases in this space and it has deployed solutions for clients like Tennis Australia, French Tennis Federation (Roland-Garros) and Komatsu, that revolve around virtual shopping and mixed reality experiences.
In 2018,
TCS acquired W12 Studios, a leading digital design studio based in London.
W12 Studios is now part of TCS Interactive, which is leading the initiatives in this space.
As part of its metaverse proofs of concept, TCS is also building a Non-fungible Token (NFT) marketplace for a major media company in the United States, a retail mall in metaverse for a fashion retail, a candy metaverse for the CPG vertical and virtual branches for a leading bank in the UK.
Beyond use cases in banking, financial services, insurance, retail, communication, education and manufacturing, the company also sees huge opportunities in marketing and sales use cases in the metaverse and is increasingly hiring non-engineering talent to address this demand.
“We are consciously looking for journalists, poets, theatre professionals among others to join our teams who are very good with spatial sound, because fundamentally, the UX and UI and user experience and user interfaces are going to kind of implode once the 3D environment is created,” Maharaj added.
