Fintech - Metaverse - A Parallel Life

foreign [Music] all right great first uh I wanna take a minute and thank Abu Dhabi Abu Dhabi Global markets for having me on stage um it's the first presentation in the morning so I want everybody to please give a round of applause to the organizing Committee of adgm for a fabulous fabulous uh opening night um there's a lot of effort that goes to put a show up like this up together so um last night was a visual spectacle it was fantastic and a great way to start um adfw so I have the slide somewhere the parallel life it's an interesting concept called The Parallel life when you talk about in the context of Finance right the brief given to me was very simple be visual set the stage up to talk about how the consumers will change in the future we'll talk a lot about financial products we'll talk a lot about the fintech revolution I'm sure we'll spend a little bit of time talking about crypto we'll avoid what happened in the last 10 days and kind of just talk about the future though but we'll talk about the parallel life but to get started I think it's important to kind of look at where this business started right so if you look at the business of mobile entertainment or Digital entertainment rather the revolution actually started in early 2000s when the Telco was kind of took a leap you know normally the telcos end up playing catch-up but they took the leap in the business um the simple things of like ring back tones ringtones wallpapers for the first evolution of entertainment on your devices that started with the value-added services moving on to the open internet economy in the late 2000s when people started consuming a lot of entertainment and services across devices right and then going to the birth of social media and then the age of tick tock and then now going to blockchain but when you talk about the parallel life you have to see how the evolution happened and you wouldn't imagine 20 years ago when you first started speaking to people on the phone that ubiquitous access to content and devices would be a reality um when you think about the customer how's the customer changed you go back historically right you were concerned about what clothes you're wearing the shoes that you're wearing how you look how you talk in front of us how your peers recognize you then came Facebook then came WhatsApp then came messaging applications and you started thinking about what's the look of my display picture what's the look of my social page what are my likes what are my dislikes what do people get to see what do people not get to see but what happens 20 years in the future is this a reality we talked about millennials we talked about gen Z you know what the generation today is called generation Alpha if generation Alpha existed what would their parallel life look like and the reason why this is important in the context of finances because it's important to understand the customer I was having a conversation backstage where we talk a lot about Financial Services we talk a lot about what the products the platforms the utility will be built but step into the shoes of the customer and understand them and that's what I'm going to try and do for the next I've got 16 minutes and 40 seconds Eros Investments is building a fantastic platform called immerso sorry can you guys hear me okay perfect sorry uh fantastic platform called immerso now you see a lot of metaverses and you see a lot of web3 projects out there the question that I get asked very frequently at events like this is how is one metaverse different from the other or how do you define a metaverse now each one defines it to the way you understand it best right so our origination for the last 45 years dealt with two things that were very simplistic and common one that consumers gravitate towards High Fidelity high quality programming and content they like to be looking at a story that is told nicely and the second thing is how do you look at a product that looks at Mass adoption think of a country like India I'm going to throw some numbers at you for 30 seconds 220 million television households that equates to a population of about 650 700 million people watching television it is the number one country for YouTube in the world with anywhere between 450 million to 500 million consumers on daily active users when a movie is released a Hollywood movie sells anywhere between 200 million to 250 million tickets a big Blockbuster a Bollywood movie sells about 100 and 120 million again a big Blockbuster so when we talk about building when we talk about the web 3 economy or the crypto economy for us Mass adoption becomes an important facet we get to immerso in just true cinematic style this slide is just a little bit of uh visual in terms of how we enter so if you're in a movie think you're an Iron Man and you want to enter the web 3 project I'm sure everybody would love to enter it on the jet and that's how you land the next visual spectacle for you is sorry the slides are taking a little longer than it should but there you go you're basically ending up into planet Earth now the reason why this representation is very very crucial here is because we're not talking about pixel based technology we're essentially talking about a cinematic experience think Iron Man think you're a big fan of Robert Downey Jr but this time you don't only want to watch the movie you don't even want to just watch the movie in 3D you want to be in Iron Man you want to be one of the spectators in the big Finale Fight and how do you do that but before we get started right let's take a couple of steps back what does the customer going back to the same point what's the customer what's relevant what's important to him in their parallel life now there are two facets that are going to be relevant right in your parallel life one is your display picture kind of pops out of the screen literally actually in some cases and is a form of an avatar now the Avatar can be uh split personality can be bipolar can be a real representation of yourself it could be two different things also we don't know that yet the second thing that's going to be important in your parallel life is going to be the digital wallet this is an important facet where your nfts your tokens your IPS that you access are all going to be stored in a repository in your wallet and this wallet will also become a large part of the primary identity and hence becomes a representation of who the customer is life is a lot about choices we wake up in the morning some of some of us have coffee some of us decide to do some exercise some of us do some meditation the metaport is an interesting representation of choices in life choices that we make every day we wake up in the morning what are your habits what are the things you like to do do you brush your teeth first or do you have your coffee first similarly once the Avatar kind of enters the metaport which is choices in life it makes selections for the sake of assumption we have choosing spirituality you start with your morning rituals the Avatar enters the Metapod says that I want to look at meditation I want to look at spirituality um this could mean anything could be exercising it's different Renditions of what the Avatar does now this becomes interesting when you look at a hybrid situation where the Avatar is also in the zone of spirituality and you're doing kind of meditation yourself parallely in the real world as I mentioned this is the day in your parallel life post the spirituality your sessions maybe had your breakfast you attend meetings now the lockdown was a very interesting trigger in our Global kind of human work life we realized how to work with people across the world realize how to adapt to time zones we realize how to um people but when we look at the evolution of Zoom or teams or WebEx into the virtual world your avatar can be present in the virtual world and there is going to be a significant amount of artificial intelligence so if you're not feeling well the Avatar might not feel well if you're not fit the Avatar might look differently so it's possible of how humanoid this character is going to get and that's going to be represented in the digital world similar to what's in the real world you've had a long day of work you've decided it's time to go meet some friends maybe have a cup of coffee a cup of tea and just have a good time in the evening and then you get back home in the evening there's a lot of us who basically will decide now it's time to do some Recreation watch some television watch some shows maybe watch some Netflix or watch a movie here it's a leap of faith we're going to show you a quick about what the consumer can do in the metaverse sorry the slides gone back this is the choices you're now looking at Recreation you're looking at options that are available for you you're looking at how do I want to engage myself I want to pause here for a second and explain to you that the metaverse isn't necessarily only about gaming uh the metaverse is just a representation or an ecosystem for the existence of your virtual self you have a bunch of options there essentially will be three kinds of customers here the first customer who we call is a Super Fan who's the gamer who wants to engage at the depth who is a massive fan of assume like The Avengers the second one is a passive fan decides to be a part of it maybe not a gaming and the third fan basically is an observer likes to see what's going on but doesn't really engage in it at that level of depth you walk into the nft marketplace and you get this whole host of options right from power-ups right from Vehicles right from nfts that do a representation right from a new nft that opens up a secret section of the game or the quest A lot of these experiences will be developed based on the fans and the community we create we talk a lot about the community and the community becomes an important facet of how we are able to engage and build the audience over a period of five to ten years you're back in the nft marketplace and you realize that I want to engage in a high level Quest these are just some examples of how you decide to do some questing there could be daily quests there could be weekly quests there could be a leaderboard these are all ways to how to engage the community Live Action gaming MMORPGs have existed for a very long time people kids in the age group of eight to ten like I have some nephews boys that are in the age group of 10 11 12. they spend four to six hours in the day in the Minecraft now the question people ask is Minecraft a metaverse and the answer is yes your character in Minecraft is important your skill in Minecraft is important web3 is talking about taking that a step further and how that makes it a reality and connects it to an economy you go in and you experience about digital Goods we'll spend a couple minutes talking about digital goods and how this is relevant and how this changes over a period of time you can walk into a mall and the mall will allow you to be able to look at nfts and assets across various metaverses that you actually engage with there could be examples of weapons there could be examples of vehicles or there could be real life digital Goods it's about how you dress up your avatar how do you allow your avatar to represent maybe on a day you want to play sports or how you represent your avatar in the way you want to game now all this is different again this is where it becomes interesting because you connect the digital economy with the hybrid economy the question asked is which one side is heavier and hence driving consumer decision and this is where you'll see over the next five years consumers changing to the digital identity actually becoming a little more important in the virtual world I'm sure this is a question that a lot of you guys in the audience are asking right I was backstage again a very interesting topic came up which I love talking about myself um it's not that when you look at new businesses or the evolution of Technology where you think about that the business model has actually changed I don't think the business model changes the business model remains consistent but identifying what are the nuances that are different or how technology is changing the customer makes you make better decisions so the question I ask myself is how is parallel life different from your real these are four key where I believe that the parallel life or your digital Avatar's lifestyle will differ from your real life the first one is ownership the second one is no code creativity the third one is engagement and the fourth one is Commerce ownership again I'm going to go back to the Avengers example just purely because everybody understands the Avengers relates to the Avengers is watched an Avengers movie probably has a favorite character probably doesn't want to talk about it publicly but has a favorite character of any age right now it's just that you don't want to be a fan of Iron Man you don't want to just watch Iron Man you don't want to be a super fan and own the merchandise you want to be a value Creator in the process of Iron Man you want to ensure that if Iron Man becomes a successful IP or a successful Venture you drive value out of it that's different no code creativity back in the day early in the 90s or 2000s we had maybe 20 50 creators around the world does somebody want to take a guess from the audience of how many creators exist across YouTube and Tick Tock today anybody okay YouTube has 51 million channels and I'm assuming about 30 to 40 million creators so 50 creators in the 90s moved to 30 to 40 million creators in 2020s what happens when creativity is extended Beyond to more people and they get an opportunity to create in your land engagement we only used to watch TV lean back then we decided we needed to like comment share how does engagement change questing change in the world in the virtual world and commerce we've briefly talked about this I'm not going to spend too much time but a lot of these change in Behavior through one two and three will affect your decisions in terms of your purchasing capacity in terms of repurchasing intent and these are the core principles right I'm again just going to talk about them a little bit ownership leads to blockchain economy allowing fans and communities to be a part of your IP and part of your ecosystem um I was part of an event in San Francisco two weeks ago where a concept of generative AI allows you the capability as a Creator to be able to put creativity out in the open market like never before we've all struggled with putting presentations think if you could just type what you wanted on a slide and the slide visually showed up gaming the next Millennials or the generation Alpha doesn't believe in just liking commenting and sharing they want to engage they want to engage deep they want to become super fans and digital Goods becomes their vanity representation of what they'd like to show now taking a step back again to who's the customer and what is the value to them this is a very important slide from the context of the session today in context of the session tomorrow of why these elements become an important fact in the customer's life cycle now it's not the case today but it's the case that's changing we've talked about all these things in the presentation today but the nfts become an important facet to be able to Showcase what you like what you dislike land creators will own land on the platform will want to showcase their creativity land and creative kind of almost go hand in hand if you're a representation that loves art if you're a representation that loves fashion what is digital fashion how is digital fashion amalgamating with real Fashion World what a fashion shows in in Milan and Paris going to look like in the metaverse these are important questions because they set the taste palettes for the rest of the global ecosystem to follow and then tokens tokens becomes an important kind of unit economic to govern this ecosystem the tokens become a decentralized layer for them to communicate across the ecosystem these are four things that are relevant to the customer that will become even more relevant in days to come I'm not saying that we understand this ecosystem to the extent that we're experts I think the important recognition to make is that you have to be in this space start early wanting to learn and taking the right cues from the customer to continue building Eros is also building something similar I talk to you guys about immerso I'm gonna to show you a little bit of a promo of what we're building just give you a brief insight the two things I talked about was Mass adoption and the two things we talked about is Cinematic experience so I'm going to request the guys around the promo the universe as we know it is an endless space filled with billions of stars and galaxies mankind continues to unravel its Mysteries Through Time studies show that the universe takes the form of an egg something ancient mythology discovered over 5000 years ago ASO is the all-encompassing universe created by the elder god the cosmic egg has infinite parallel manifestations each of these universes has 14 Realms with planets infused with all forms of life and wonder Earth lies on the central realm inhabited by humans boss the Realms above and below are populated by celestials across several planetary systems in marso is built upon the foundations of ancient cosmology a universe embodied with mystery wisdom and Advanced Technologies where you can live play create and dream like never before foreign [Music] with uh about 45 years in storytelling understanding customers and serving over about 200 250 million people across the world um immerse was just an example of how we want to give an opportunity for creators across the world across the ecosystem to come build we could create the platforms we create our own IP within this but there will be IPS that will be born um and I want to encourage each and every one of you that is in the business of virtual worlds to look at true utility for customers when you look at building to kind of further fuel the kind of crypto and the blockchain economy and we feel that the virtual world is an interesting representation of how that's going to make that grow I want to thank you for giving time to me today to allow to speak to you it was an absolute pleasure I'm grateful for the opportunity and have a lovely rest of the adfw thank you [Applause]