Infographic: IT services firms invest in Metaverse market

India's top IT services firms are working on embedding various technologies to tap the Metaverse market, which is estimated to provide a $8 trillion opportunity, as per global investment bank Goldman Sachs. India's software service exports have traditionally been focused on consulting and IT infrastructure services, but Indian companies have expanded their offerings to deep tech like Artificial Intelligence, Data Analytics and augmented virtual reality as part of Web 3.0 or Metaverse.

Embedded technologies to create an alternative reality for clients can unlock huge value for Indian IT companies, especially in a new normal where work, education, and some health services have shifted to a remote model, according to industry experts.

Tata Consultancy Services TCS India's largest IT services company, has already made its initial investment in the Metaverse.

It is an emerging area, and we've been investing in it a lot. We have a strong research and development organisation wherein they work on the frontier areas of technology and Metaverse is one of them. We have executed several proof of concepts and use cases at this point in time as to how that could change the world of business. N Ganapathy Subramaniam, Chief Operating Officer and Executive Director of TCS, told BusinessToday that the Metaverse is going to revolutionise the way we do business. In an emailed statement.

TCS's rival Infosys is betting big on digital services. In response to a question during Q 3 earnings call, Infosys CEO Salil Parekh said that the company has a great focus on modernisation, including building on the native cloud.

The technology, digital transformation, is the centre of what we are seeing with clients and in that we feel extremely well-positioned, because that is the strength of Infosys. Our delivery engine is extremely robust, and we have a portfolio capability of services that are focused on cloud and digital, which is helping our clients to transform. Consulting is a critical part as it helps build the framework for these transformations, and the vast majority of what clients do after the initial consulting is taking the technology into account in making all that work, he said.

HCL Technologies expects extended reality XR to scale up in a few years.

With our experience of working with several customers from aerospace, automotive, manufacturing, and hi-tech companies, we observe XR adoption across use cases, such as training, product development, repair and maintenance, to name a few. Some of the use cases have proven the return on investment ROI and are poised to scale in the years to come. We strongly believe that companies obsessed with redefining customer experience must make XR-supported service part of their mainstream. In a recent blogpost, both HCL Tech Vice President Ravisankar Venkatachalam and Associate General Manager Sanjeeb Behera said there was a lot of optimism and excitement about the adoption of this technology in solving business challenges.

According to Nandkishor Dalvi, Territory Manager at ELGi Equipment, Web 3.0 will change the way the Internet works in the coming decade.

The web 2.0 has been successful for many companies like Facebook, Youtube, Google and they have changed the way the internet used to operate. Dalvi wrote in a LinkedIn post that there is a problem that everything is still centralised in the hands of these companies.

Web 3.0 is claiming to be addressing the concerns of centralisation by giving control in the hands of the user and making the ecosystem more decentralised. He stated that companies like Decentraland and Sandbox have already started building Metaverse gaming platforms where the control lies in the hands of the users.