As interest in metaverse grows, Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) is investing in the space with the firm having put out deal proposals for customers that are currently small in size but expected to go up over the next five years, said the president and head of business and technology services.
In an interaction with Moneycontrol, Krishnan Ramanujam said, “We are quite excited about it and we are making significant investments in metaverse along those lines. But the deal pipeline in terms of value will be very small.”
This comes in the wake of buzz around metaverse, a 3D virtual world which people can traverse in their digital avatars, especially since the US tech major Facebook rebranded itself into Meta, to reflect its shift in focus. Silicon Valley companies such as Microsoft and even banks are going big on metaverse. For instance, global investment bank JP Morgan Chase opened its metaverse lounge Decentreland recently. In a report, it said the market opportunity is expected to be $1 trillion.
For IT companies, the metaverse offers a significant opportunity, thanks in large part to the pandemic that accelerated cloud adoption. Top IT companies, including TCS, are investing in this opportunity.
Speaking to Moneycontrol about the opportunities, Ramanujam said that the metaverse is one of the possibilities that is coming from the foundation of the cloud, which accelerated in the pandemic. The metaverse is expected to see faster uptake as companies adopt it for various use cases, he added.
“When the initial adoption starts, there will be an inflection point where the adoption will explode just as COVID-19 proved to be one for global adoption. Hopefully, it will be not a bad thing like the pandemic (for the metaverse),” he explained.
Given the potential metaverse has, Ramanujam said TCS is already has significant investments in it.
Metaverse use cases
The most popular use case for metaverse is shopping experience. “Online shopping and associated experiences are the most basic very preliminary proofs of concept and are very popular,” Ramanujam said.
Workplace experience is another area where companies are seeing traction. TCS has already made proof of concept for employee on-boarding and customer experience, where the company has done a small pilot and the project is in production.
“You can familiarise employees with everything in your office if someone is joining TCS office, giving virtual reality experience like the layout of the office and canteen. So employee onboarding is a very popular use case. Like that, there are a few more, but I would say those are still fairly very preliminary,” he added.
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