Indian Celebrities Launch NFT Memorabilia And Expect Millions Of Dollars To Roll Into Their Pockets

JAKARTA— Indian celebrities from the world of Bollywood and cricket are increasingly launching digital memorabilia through non-fungible tokens (NFT). They hope to earn thousands of dollars by cashing in on the increased interest in the asset.

NFT is a type of digital asset that uses blockchain to record ownership of items such as images, videos, and other collectibles. Their booming popularity has confused many but the explosive growth shows no signs of abating.

Bollywood superstars like Amitabh Bachchan and Salman Khan are planning to launch NFT soon. If NFT Bachchan is going to include autographed posters from his films, Khan has already built excitement on his Twitter account by telling his 43 million followers about the planned launch of NFT.

"NFT is currently strange to Bollywood, but I'm sure they (film stars) will see this as another platform where they can use their existing content and generate revenue," said Ayaan Agnihotri of Bollycoin, the NFT marketplace for Bollywood assets.

Agnihotri said that within days of launching this month, its platform sold 8 million of the available 20 million so-called "BollyCoins", crypto tokens that can be used to buy NFTs at launch. One BollyCoin is worth 10 US cents. But it's still early days for celebrity NFTs in India.

Indian cricketer Dinesh Karthik is auctioning a digital art reel of a cricket match in which he hit six match winners on the final ball for around 5 ethereum, the digital currency, worth around 20,000 US dollars. But he hasn't received any offers.

"NFT has picked up a lot in the West in the past year with now the iconic moment of basketball being bought by fans digitally, which gave us the idea," Karthik told Reuters.

Others have had success. One of India's top fashion designers, Manish Malhotra, recently sold NFT digital sketches of some of his most famous creations for US$4,000 per piece. The Malhotra website shows that one can buy some of her wedding outfits for a lower price range of 2,500-3,500 US dollars.

The advent of NFT has confused many who say that it makes no sense to spend large sums of money on items that don't exist physically and can only be viewed online.

However, NFT's global sales volume had jumped to $10.7 billion in the third quarter of 2021, making it an eight-fold increase from the previous quarter, data from market tracker DappRadar shows.

Vishakha Singh, vice president for NFT at Indian crypto exchange WazirX, said celebrity participation in this segment will create excitement in the space.

"This is great for the ecosystem. It will help us in gathering more awareness of this new game-changing world of digital assets," said Singh.