Indian E-commerce Giant Flipkartis Flipverse Expenditures On The Metaverse

JAKARTA - Consumers in India get more choices for the digital shopping experience as major local e-commerce platforms increasingly experiment with blockchain and Metaverse.

Buyers of India can try out products from brands like Puma and Nivea in a gaming and interactive metaverse. That's thanks to local e-commerce giant Flipkart launching a metaverse space for consumers to find products at destinations and photorealistic virtual stores.

Flipkart officially announced the launch of the Flipverse on October 17, aiming to bridge its best online and offline shopping experience.

Developed in collaboration with Polygon-incubated eDAO organization Flipverse allows buyers to create metaverse avatars to shop in the virtual world, with the intention of bringing customers closer to their favorite brands.

At the same time, brands will be able to generate and create their digital twines of the metaverse in cyberspace.

In addition to displaying exclusive brand contests and offers, Flipverse will support a unique digital collection. According to the announcement, Flipverse will feature a large number of brands, including Puma, Noise, Nivea, Lavie, Tokyo Talkies, Campus, and others. A new shopping experience will be available on the new Flipkart online shopping platform, FireDrops.

The Flipverse offering is reported to be in the pilot stage and aims to attract during this month's festive season. Flipverse's first phase pilot project will go live for a week, as announced by Flipkart.

Menurut Naren Ravula, wakil presiden strategi produk Flipkart Labs, Metaverse adalah salah satu "revolution signifikan" dalam pengembangan e-commerce, dan memiliki potensi besar. Dengan memberi pelanggan akses ke merek, penawaran, SuperCoin, dan koleksi digital pilihan mereka, kami bertujuan untuk meningkatkan pengalaman berbelanja mereka dalam pengaturan virtual dan imersif, kata Ravula.

Polygon co-founder Sandeep Nailwal pointed out that the world has just "started to scratch the surface of what may be happening in the metaverse," and e-commerce is one of the "lethal use cases" of the Metaverse.

As one of India's largest e-commerce platforms, Flipkart is known for making some vague statements on social media. Last year, Flipkart took to Twitter to say that the company would accept Bitcoin payments, which eventually turned out to be a April Mop joke.

Flipkart is not the only company in India experimenting with Metaverse. India's multinational technology company, Tech Mahindra, announced the launch of TechMVerse in February 2022, plans to offer customers interactive and immersive experiences. In July 2022, the company reportedly worked on as many as 60 metaverse projects.