70% Of Businesses Planning To Integrate Metaverse In Their Organizational Activities: PwC India Report Over 70 per cent of Indian top executives and C-suite leaders were reported to have plans to integrate metaverse in their organizational activities, with 63% being actively working towards it and planning to embed it in the system within a year fully.

PricewaterhouseCoopers India, on Wednesday, unveiled its new Metaverse report titled "Our Take- Embracing the Metaverse." Over 70 per cent of Indian top executives and C-suite leaders were reported to have plans to integrate metaverse in their organizational activities, with 63% being actively working towards it and planning to embed it in the system within a year fully.

For the uninitiated, metaverse refers to a digital environment with a virtual world that mirrors our reality through the use of emerging technologies and hardware such as artificial intelligence (AI), low/no-code platforms, blockchain, 5G, augmented reality (AR), and virtual reality (VR).

"The metaverse opportunity is enormous, and we expect exponential growth because it is relevant across genders, geographies, and generations. Consumers are open to adopting new technologies, and companies are investing heavily in the required infrastructure to leverage the metaverse. We can already see brands experimenting in the metaverse to delight their customers," shares Ashootosh Chand, Partner - Digital and Emerging Technologies, PwC India.

The report was produced after a post-survey, covering over 150 businesses in sectors such as technology, media and telecom (TMT), financial services (FS), pharma and healthcare, retail and consumer, industrial products, government, automotive and EdTech.

TMT and FS sectors are the leaders when it comes to awareness and understanding of the metaverse.

Out of 28 TMT companies surveyed, 79 per cent stated that they either had a detailed or a good understanding of the metaverse.

"Metaverse allows organizations to be really innovative about how they can meaningfully engage with the customers, employees and the broader ecosystem. There is enough evidence that the "hype" is getting replaced by a better appreciation of driving tangible business outcomes as the technology further matures," shared Sudipta Ghosh, Partner & Leader – Data & Analytics, PwC India, on how a company's Metaverse success relied upon its effective data utilization.

Metaverse Embedding Timeline: US and India

Making a comparison between a PwC US 2022 report and 'Our Take- Embracing the Metaverse' on the question 'Thinking about your company's metaverse plans, when do you expect these to be embedded fully and be a part of your company's business activities?' 38 per cent of US companies plan to embed metaverse in their business activities within a year, against 25 per cent of Indian companies.

Only 4 per cent and 7 per cent of respondents in the US and India, respectively, shared that they will take four-five years to embed metaverse in their system fully. "However, the metaverse ecosystem in India is still at a nascent stage; businesses are warming up to its opportunities and technology companies are still in the process of building their solution stack," the report stated.

39 per cent of Indian respondents believe metaverse will be a social platform, 9 per cent believe it to be the next incarnation of the internet, 20 per cent think it will revolutionize businesses and create a mega creator economy, with only 24 per cent being unsure about the digital environment with 8 per cent believing it will never materialize.

Talking about the challenges, 36 per cent believe cybersecurity poses the biggest risk for Indian businesses, while 28 per cent believe technological limitations will be equally threatening.