Hyderabad to become a hub for metaverse: Tech Mahindra

Hyderabad: IT services major Tech Mahindra Ltd is optimistic about metaverse trends across the world. Hyderabad can become a centre for metaverse, said CP Gurnani, MD & CEO of Tech Mahindra, while launching its metaverse practice 'TechMVerse' in the city on Monday. The company has initiated the operations of TechMVerse across four hubs – at Hyderabad and Pune in India, Dallas in US and London in UK.

Sharing the new platform's hiring plans, he said: "The company currently has around 50-100 people dedicated for TechMVerse. Depending on the skills required, we will be looking at 50 per cent existing and other 50 per cent people with industry experience in delivering a metaverse project. We are planning to hire and train about 1,000 engineers in the first year across all the hubs."

"We need separate execution team in Hyderabad and Pune. The size of the team working for TechMVerse operations in Hyderabad will be around 500-600 in the immediate future and hopefully it will become much bigger," Gurnani said, adding that the company's metaverse platform will create new jobs, value addition to the State and bring more user-friendly use-cases across tier-2 and tier-3 cities. With an aim to transforming customer experience and deliver real business outcomes, Tech Mahindra will leverage its world-leading network and infrastructure capabilities along with its foundational technological capabilities including pervasive artificial intelligence (AI), blockchain, 5G, augmented reality (AR), virtual reality (VR), and quantum computing to build B2B use cases across sectors.

Covid-19 pandemic is driving the metaverse workplaces across the world connecting everyone. TechMVerse aims to drive commerce in the metaverse. In its initial phase, the company wants to leverage partnership opportunities with hyper-scalers and startups to build B2B use cases such as DealerVerse for car dealership, Middlemist – an NFT marketplace, Meta Bank – a virtual bank and online gaming centre.

The MD & CEO said: "Metaverse has the power to disrupt our reality, as well as the future, for good. We have always been at the forefront of 5G and our entry into the Metaverse is yet another milestone in our journey of catalysing future readiness and disrupting and transforming customer experiences. The fundamental layers of metaverse are very well integrated within Tech Mahindra and its competencies."

"From infrastructure to experience, from spatial computing to now commerce, TechMverse would enable a seamless integration between our known expertise in 5G with our skills in AI, AR/VR and blockchain. We would be training workforce of 1,000 engineers to ensure they are ready to solve complex business challenges and imagine new worlds for our customers and society," he added.

Metaverse is a fast-evolving digital environment where individuals can interact with each other in a 3D virtual space. As the global Metaverse revenue opportunity could approach $800 billion in 2024, Tech Mahindra is geared up to harness the power of Metaverse to bring imagination to life and offer futuristic experiences now.

Network of the future, 5G, will form the backbone to provide enhanced experience to customers in the metaverse universe. As part of Nxt. Now framework, which aims to enhance 'Human Centric Experience', Tech Mahindra focuses on investing in emerging technologies and solutions that enable digital transformation and meet the evolving needs of the customer.