India has great potential to lead metaverse technology

There appears to be growing expectations from India that it will become the gateway to the metaverse. The Experimental Technology Innovation Center (XTIC) of the Indian Institute of Technology Madras will make this feasible. The target date for the creation of the metaverse’s ecosystem is 2047. To accomplish this, XTIC is constructing a metaverse passage that resembles India’s current IT passage in some ways.

XTIC emphasizes to India’s youth the metaverse’s fundamental concepts, such as perpetual engineering. The Consortium for Augmented and Virtual Environment Engineering (CAVE) is a consortium composed of XR, with XTIC as its leader. The digital space syndicate has over 270 members from diverse backgrounds, including merchants, consultants, and Indian corporations.

It is a documented fact that more than half of India’s population is under 30 years old. As young people, they are very familiar with the digital environment. India also boasts the highest number of STEM graduates worldwide and can effectively meet the demand for a digital workforce. Along with the IT industry in India, the government’s goal of achieving a $5 trillion economy will aid in attracting even more young people to the digital space.

Startups and digital transactions such as USSD, UPI, and AEPS will contribute to the growth of the Indian metaverse economy. In addition to virtual real estate, the metaverse will be responsible for enhancing gaming, education standards, and e-commerce. This will aid in the development of new business concepts and revenue-generating avenues.

As India is multilingual, language barriers are one of the obstacles associated with the metaverse. In India, entrepreneurs will face 780 distinct dialects and 122 distinct languages. The metaverse could be utilized to unite Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam across all languages. The initiative of Meta’s No Language Left Behind (NLLB), which uses open source modules to provide 200 languages with authenticated translations, may be able to resolve the issue. Prof. S. Umesh of XTIC’s Speech Lab states that they are developing Cascade Models for multiple Indian languages using Meta’s NLLB module. Regardless of language preference, everyone in Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam should have the option to speak in their native dialect. 

If language barriers do not exist, Metaverse has the potential to democratize Indian education. As a 3D extension of the internet, Metaverse will be able to advance matters in light of how the internet has altered the way we view education. It will be able to facilitate interaction between students and instructors. The National Education Policy’s (NEP) emphasis on specialized education can be utilized by the metaverse. Dr. V. Vijayalakshmi of XTIC, with the support of Meta, is investigating numerous methods for enhancing education in the metaverse. This applies to both offline and online learning. 

All things considered, India’s internet connectivity falls short of expectations. There is also the question of whether the general public can afford to remain online due to cost considerations. The regulatory aspects of the metaverse are not currently in effect in India. Along with the Shakthi processor that IIT Madras is developing, XTIC is creating open source software on the Bharat OS platform to address this problem.

India has a promising future in the metaverse, where virtual reality is associated with Maya, a term that is familiar to Indians. The new generation must be able to distinguish between science and tradition. India’s participation in fields such as perpetual engineering and algebra will help pave the path forward. It is possible to realize Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam so long as religion, race, and tradition do not interfere with science.