Indian IT companies are jumping on to the metaverse bandwagon amid a global move to the future virtual world.

Last month, two of India’s leading IT services companies, Infosys Ltd and Tech Mahindra Ltd, announced their foray into the metaverse.

Infosys launched a metaverse foundry to help its clients explore the potential of the nascent virtual universe. The foundry harnesses the power of technologies such as augmented reality and virtual reality (AR/VR), blockchain, non-fungible tokens (NFTs), Internet of Things (IoT), applied AI (artificial intelligence), cybersecurity and 5G to deliver value in the metaverse.

Ravi Kumar S., president, Infosys says, “the physical and virtual worlds are already smoothly and ubiquitously interwoven. The metaverse will deepen this overlap and in very experiential ways that will create abundant space for business innovation.”

“We want to help our clients to quickly double down on those opportunities in a find-fast, learn-faster environment before they can reorient their own capabilities, processes and culture in-house to respond to this rapidly evolving space,” adds Ravi Kumar.

Tech Mahindra launched TechMVerse, its metaverse practice to deliver interactive and immersive experiences for its customers. In the initial phase, Tech Mahindra will leverage the opportunities presented by the metaverse through areas such as car dealership, NFT marketplace, virtual banking and gaming. Initially, the operations of TechMVerse will be spread across four hubs—Dallas, London, Pune and Hyderabad.

C.P. Gurnani, chief executive officer and managing director, Tech Mahindra says, “one of our key focus areas is helping our customers’ digital journey and technology is helping us build the differentiators. Metaverse is clearly a key differentiator. Like any other new technology, our metaverse offering will be initially incubated in a smaller group and then shared with our clients because for most of them, it is also a new way of running their business.”