Meta founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg on Wednesday said he was excited about the role India would play in building the future of metaverse.
Metaverse is a virtual-reality space or a virtual world, where people can socialise, work, and play, and Mr. Zuckerberg said he believed it was the future of the Internet.
“I think the metaverse is going to be the successor to the mobile Internet,” he said. “It’s this immersive internet (or embodied internet) where you’re in it rather than seeing it. This is going to be an Internet where you feel like you’re there and you’re present with people and in other places. And, it’s this continuation of the technological trends that we’ve seen over the last few decades,” he added.
On India’s talent pool, he said the engineers, developers and creators, and the country’s whole vibrant start-up ecosystem were playing a huge role in shaping the future.
“India is on track to have the largest app developer base in the world by 2024, and already has one of the largest spark AR developer communities,” he noted while in conversation with Vishal Shah, V-P, Metaverse, at a session on Reimagining the Future of India, at Meta’s annual flagship event ‘Fuel For India 2021’.
According to Mr. Zuckerberg, the online gaming sector in India has seen a lot of growth over the past few years and his company’s investment in gaming in the country kept growing and he was keen to see how it was going to take shape in the metaverse.
He further said, metaverse was not going to get built by one company or a small number of companies, but would be a global exercise involving millions of creators and entrepreneurs.
“We’re going to need to empower millions of creators around the world. And that’s what we’re so excited about seeing here in India, a developer ecosystem, and the ecosystem of individual entrepreneurs. I think we’re going to see a huge foundation for metaverse to get built here in India,” he said in a live virtual event on Facebook.
Meta also announced the second phase of its partnership with the Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) to provide a curriculum on digital safety, online well-being, and augmented reality for more than 10 million students and 1 million educators in the country. The second phase would be implemented in three years, while phase one of the initiative was announced in 2020.
