Metaverse is being considered as a big business opportunity by Indian corporates such as Infosys, Tech Mahindra, TCS, HCL and others. Metaverse is being accelerated by conductive environment — developmrnt of technology ecosystem. rising enterpreneurship, smart phones, availability of mobile data plans and large millennial population. In addition, there is going to be 5G penetration, use of NFTS, AR-VR hardware. Metaverse is estimated to have a business of $48 billion in 2022. The business will surge $670 billion by 2030. No Big Tech and IT company can afford to ignore metaverse.

Apart from big revenues, metaverse promises higher business margins, say around 12-15 per cent higher margins. The segments which have tapped metaverse are retail, shopping and gaming currently. There are opportunities in AR, VR and MR components of metaverse business. Some 8-10 per cent business will emerge from the building blocks of the metaverse.

There are opportunities in metaverse use-cases, say avatars, cities, spaces, assets and digital economy.

Metaverse can be used to design products and to detect new ways to interact with the customers.

Thus there demand but there is no enough capacity in metaverse business.

In future, life will be hybrid — there should be templates for immersive retail in metaverse, which allows checkouts there, for the products to be delivered in the physical world. There could be meetings in the metaverse, which are followed up in the real world. Thus hybrid living and working will emerge as a new norm.

In 2022, Infosys has launched Metaverse Foundry. It has a team 500 experts working on different skills and creating templates for metaverse. Infosys has already done metaverse projects for the Australian Open and French Open. Infosys created mixed reality experiences where avatars of fans could interact with others and shop for products.

Tech Mahindra too worked on metaverse — a combination of software and hardware capabilities to offer 3D visual experience to clients. It is offering avatar-as-a-service meta environment, NFT marketplaces, content management and other services.

Accenture has started Continuum. It has hired 1.5 lac employees to work in the metaverse space. It will offer industry-specific solutions to the clients. There are surgical solutions where the surgeons are not physically in the same room.

TCS has made initial investment in the metaverse through its Extended Reality (ER) Lab. Here many team members work of several proof-of-concept projects and use-cases.

As we have already observed, Union Bank of India has launched on July 8, 2022 its metaverse lounge by a tie-up with Tech Mahindra. SBI is close to getting into metaverse space.

Metaverse projects are still small, between $1million and $5 million at present. Margins though are higher.

HCL expects XR to scale up in time to come.

Since its advent in 2009, Bitcoin has dramatic rise and fall — it reached as high as high as $60000 and fell to half that value in just a few weeks. Dogecoin had even more sharp decline. Despite the fall, the value of all cryptos was more than $1.5 trillion a year back — a mind-boggling amount for something which are just a computer code.

Should be we dealing in cryptos?

Bitcoins are cumbersome, slow and expensive to use. It takes almost 10 minutes for a transaction to go through. The transaction fees median stands at $20. Their volatility makes them unviable as a medium of exchange. It is like buying a beer using a $10 bill and next day buying a bottle of fine wine with the same bill.

Bitcoins do not shield your anonymity. The US government could track and retrieve a part of the ransom paid to hacking syndicate Dark Side in the Colonial Pipeline ransomware attack. It raises doubts about Bitcoins being immune to traceability.

In 5G implementation, there are two options — use the proprietary technology of global telecom gear makers such as Ericsson, Nokia and Samsung or use open radio access network (O-RAN). The proprietary technology is offered as a bundle of hardware and software. India is skeptical about the Chinese companies such as Huawei and ZTE. The US supports O-RAN.

As the benefits of O-RAN, they cite the reduction of network capital costs, freedom to choose vendors and flexibility in network management.

Though India has opted for O-RAN, as a percentage of global 5G sites, it is only 1 per cent, and may reach 3 per cent by 2030. Rautken, Japan and Dish Networks, US have deployed 5G O-RAN. Its deployment on other networks is on trial.

O-RAN, being disruptive technology, will have teething problems, and will scale up by 2023-24 on Indian introduction. It is expected to get stabilised by 2025, or else it is doomed.

O-RAN is being supported by global giants — Intel, Qualcomm, Google, Amazon and India’s Big Tech TCS and Tech Mahindra.

Jio has embarked upon its own O-RAN technology in some areas through either its R&D or Radisys, its US aquisition. Jio wants to sell its own O-RAN version globally.

Traditional telecom gear makers are ready to adapt to the flexibility element O-RAN offers to ensure business.

Metaverse is online virtual world and is an amalgm of VR, AR and 3D holographic avatars. It is an alternative world where people can work, play, attend events and do socialising in their virtual avatars.

Facebook added a personal boundary feature on its metaverse platform in February, 2022. A user who activates this prevents others to come closer than two feet from him. On a breach, the system alerts you, and halts their movement. Toxmod is an AI-assisted software that analyses the language and words used. If they are found offensive, the moderator in a chat room is alerted and the speech is muted. Facebook’s Meta platform too has issues of content being offensive. A metaverse which is safe for predators becomes unsafe for users.

In metaverse, there should be adequate mechanism to report violations of decency. There are instances of groping and harassment. There are assaults on women avatars. There are simulations of private intimate acts. Such incidents are not isolated, but are widespread.

If an avatar is touched in metaverse, the hand controllers vibrate. It is disturbing. Though not real, it is pretty unnerving. Some do feel that they are being abused in reality.

There is no regulation of the metaverse at present. Metaverse will take sometime to mature. Even internet evolved over a period of time. There should be some cybersecurity set-ups and cyber crime laws.

The Webb operates at infrared wavelengths up to 50 times longer than those of visible light. It sees farther into the universe and sees deeper into the obscured regions. It, therefore, extends our view of the universe closer to its beginning and exposes the process of formation of stars and planets.

The Hubble telescope was about the size of a school bus whereas the Webb is the size of a tennis court. Its eight mirrors are light collecting bucket, and are six times bigger.

The first Webb image has been released in July 2022. It is a picture of galaxy cluster SMACS 0723. It is the deepest image of a slice of the universe. The Webb has also carried out spectroscopy of 48 of the galaxies in this field, measuring the red-ward shift of their spectra. The red-shift provides an estimate of the distance. The one out of these 48 galaxies has the highest red-shift. It is so distant that its light has taken 13.1 billion years to travel to us. It covers almost the entire 13.8 billion year lifetime of the universe.

In picture 2, there is spectrum of a planet WASP-96 b orbitting a distant star. There is presence of water in the planet’s atmosphere. The Webb will help characterising exoplanets. We will know which planets are habitable, and whether the conditions conducive to life exist there.

The third image is that of a planetary nebula NGC 3132 showing its detailed structure. A nebula is formed when a star is dying. The central part of the star becomes a dwarf after contracting.

Picture 4 shows a nursery of newly forming star and planets. It is the process of the stars being born.

Picture 5 shows Stephan’s Quintet. It is a composite of 1000 images. Quintet is a compact group of galaxies. There is a blackhole at the centre of one galaxy.

The vastness of the universe makes us realise that we are just a speck. Still we take effort to figure out the majesty of the universe with our three pounds of grey matter.

We are waiting for Web 3.0, an improved version of today’s Web 2.0 internet. However, Web 3.0 cannot materialise without real-time data. Blockchain, the backbone of Web 3.0, lacks the real-time data. Many researchers are working to resolve this issue.

DataStax is making Ethereum blockchain available as a service to users. Here developers can use open API. They can make queries, and can have access to real-time data.

Payment settlement systems are being developed on blockchain. Banks are attempting reconciliations with blockchain, though this demands a lot of processing. Blockchain is entering the backoffice of the banks.

An incentive to Web 3.0 are the steps towards the development of metaverse. Web 3.0 and metaverse have a symbiotic relationship.

Credit extension becomes easier if there is account aggregation system. Account aggregators are licensed NBFCs that enable instant exchange of financial data between Financial Information Providers (FIPs) and Financial Information Users (FIUs) with the explicit consent of the customer.

Technology Service Provider (TSP) collaborates with the FIUs and FIPs to deliver Account Aggregator — AA — products and services.

Thus FIP and FIUs are the foundation modules of the account aggregation system. AAs are data-blind as the data flows through the system in encrypted form and can be processed only by FIU for whom it is intended.

Account aggregation is thus a process in which data from many or all of an individual’s or household’s financial accounts are collected at one place.

Account aggregator is RBI-regulated entity that assists an individual in securely and digitally accessing and sharing information from one financial institution to any other regulated financial institution in the AA network. A company can become an account aggregator.

Two common methods of account aggregation are screen scraping or data scraping from one app to another or by establishing direct connections.

Five or six major banks including SBI are expected to go live on AA system by the end of July, 2022. Other PSBs too will soon be onboarded. The focus is on end-to-end Straight Through Processing (STP). Major private banks have already been onboarded on the system. All this will make a big impact on financial inclusion. Many would be able to avail of small ticket loans from banks as banks will have access to the borrower’s verified tamperproof data. Currently, 300 million accounts are enabled on AA. This will increase, and may double as more banks are onboarded.

Celebrities, especially sports stars and movie stars, have been used to endorse the brands. The trend is, however, changing in favour social media influencers. An A-Lister movie star charges Rs.8-10 crore for a commercial. Character artists may charge a notch lower. As against this, the influencers with 20000-50000 followers charges Rs.7000-8000. Those with 50000-80000 followers usually charge Rs.15000 per post. Social media celebrities with 2.5 lac to 5 lac followers would charge Rs.50000 per post. Instead of spending money on mega starts, corporates get four or five influencers, which results in a wider reach in diverse sections. Brands are engaging influencers, achievers, OTT actors and even stand-up comedians.

These are the days when consumption of digital media is more than that of TV and print. Advertisers too are shifting to digital content creators to appeal to the millennials.

In addition, we today have a discerning audience. It will not be swayed by the more presence of a celebrity.

Brands have a whole new breed of endorsers. The process is accelerated by higher mobile penetration into the interiors. Some brands have been built upon the Instagram influencers and YouTube vloggers.

The Khans and Akshay Kumar are the last superstars the movie industry has seen. The sheen of superstardom is wearing off. It is time to make use of the new age digital endorsers in brand building.

It is now known that the Twitter deal of Musk was abondoned on account of underreporting of fake accounts. Twitter claims that less than 5 per cent of its accounts are fake, but according to global research agencies, it is three times the quoted number. It affects the valuation of the company. It should be noted that 95 per cent revenue of Twitter comes from advertising.

There is the use of bots. Bots are used by companies to automate some of the functions, say monitoring criticism or keeping tabs on complaints. However, bots are also used to view ads. Companies pay for real audience and not machine audience of their ads. It is a fraud. Primarily bots push some other agenda, but its unattended consequence is to scan the ads, thus increasing the audience. The technology (tech) behind creating a bot is so simple and easy that it is proliferating like anything.

Advertisers spend money on these falsified numbers, and are paying for bots who are treated as an audience of human beings.

mFilterIt is an ad fraud detection and protection company in India. It believes that Google as search engine has the lowest average fraud rate — 10-12 per cent. It means that of their total viewership, 10-12 per cent is generated by machines. It means advertisers lose a similar percentage of money.

Google Ads Network and Facebook Audience Network tie-up with other digital platforms to insert impressions on revenue sharing basis (70% to website and 30% to social media company). Here the ad fraud rate is higher — 18 per cent. On YouTube, it is 17 per cent.

On click-on ads, the rate is between 15 and 20 per cent. Some e-commerce sites, publishing agencies, sports platforms, the rate touches 30-35 per cent. In India, the percentages are higher than the global average.

Over 45 per cent fraud happens through the bot route. Then there are other methods — click scams, say 25 per cent. Here malware is inserted in the device to generate ad clicks, and domain spoofing.

The first electric battery was made by an Italian scientist Alessandro Volta in 1800. The V for volts has been derived from his name. The world has realised that it is time to switch over from coal and other fossil fuels to more renewable energy resources such as the sun and the wind. However, these sources are not consistently exploitable, as there are cloudy days and still nights. These renewables require a storage device that will pack the surplus energy. That storage device is a battery. It supplies power when the sun does not shine, and the wind does not blow.

Voltas cell used either sodium chloride or sodium hydroxide as an electrolyte between the plates of positive and negative electrodes. The common element of the electrolyte is sodium.

Thus sodium debuted on the battery landscape. Lithium is another element used in batteries and was discovered 17 years later. Sodium was later replaced by Lithium.

However, sodium is staging a comeback. Relience acquired Faradion, a British firm in the field of sodium-ion batteries. Natron, a California-based company and CATL, a Chinese company has improved sodium-ion technologies.

Why this renewed interest in sodium? As a matter of fact, sodium and lithium are cousins on the periodic table and behave similarly. However, lithium scores over sodium in batteries. Sodium is thus reduced to the position of a poor man’s lithium.

Lithium is expensive. It costs $80000 per tonne whereas sodium costs less than $800 per tonne. There is more sodium than lithium in the world.

Storage capacity of sodium batteries is less ounce for ounce than lithium batteries. You require a heavier sodium battery for the same capacity. Scientists, therefore, researched more on lithium battery technology. The Nobel of 2019 in chemistry went to these scientists.

Sony launched a handheld video camera with a rechargeable lithium battery in 1991. Since then, there is constant improvement in lithium-ion batteries.

Sodium ion batteries are economical. It is easy to extract sodium. There is no need of cobalt in sodium batteries. There is constant improvement in sodium batteries too, and are now far better than lead acid batteries used in cars. They have reached a stage where lithium batteries were a few years ago. Faradion’s batteries store about 160 watt-hours of energy per kilogram. It is similar to lithium batteries using lithium-iron phosphate (LFP) technology.

It is now the time when both lithium and sodium batteries will co-exist. Lithium will be the first choice for portable devices. Elsewhere, where battery weight and low energy density do not matter, sodium batteries could be used, say for short-range vehicles such as e-rickshaws, home invertors, renewable grids and city cabs.