International NFT players making a beeline in India

International NFT marketplaces have started making beeline by foraying in India.

Singapore-based marketplace GuardianLink has entered Indian NFT markets and the leading Turkish digital asset exchange platform Bitay, has announced its plans to foray into the Indian market.

Founded in 2016 with a deep base of over 350 product avengers and NFT artists providing global execution capabilities, the GuardianLink has launched NFT's of Kalpana Chawla, Amitabh Bachchan and Stanley's Chakra. Also recently the company has come up with Jump.trade a new NFT marketplace for NFT gaming. The platform will feature NFTs of international brands and celebrities as well as gaming.

Every new technology and every manifestation of its development have been making the world a smaller place, rendering borders and their limitations obsolete. This elimination of borders is not just limited to communication but even grade.

Blockchain technology is one such quantum leap that is rendering useless, even the legislative limitations of cross-border trading. Non Fungible tokens, one of the most prominent manifestations of the blockchain also carries the same attributes and it is only natural that NFT trading is borderless.

India is one of the biggest markets for any product across the globe and NFTs cannot be an exception. Never ever in the history of commerce has any country had enough resources and production capacity for it to cater to the domestic market volume. The same can be said about technical capabilities to scale up the production volume.

India, therefore, has a healthy and globally acceptable need to welcome NFT companies from across the globe. In addition, it is also natural for the initiators of NFTs to associate themselves with a company not based out of India. This introduces a little confusion but with positive outcomes. The celebrity or the brand might belong to India and the consumers/collectors might belong to India but the company that facilitates the creation and marketing of NFTs might not be an Indian company.

GuardianLink and Jump.trade are companies registered in Singapore. The legal setup in Singapore is more congenial for blockchain/crypto/NFT companies to function without any turbulence or turmoil. However, India, without question, is one of the biggest markets for NFTs. There are a lot of emotional factors that drive purchase decisions in India which include but are not limited to cinema and cricket.

Talking to Bizz Buzz, Ramkumar Subramaniam, CEO, GuardianLink, said: "We saw a great potential in India as a market and also as a center for skills involving art and development."

While we cannot completely call it a challenge, we had a few specific requirements to comply with, not the least of which is the need for us to establish compliance with the advertising policies mandated by the Indian government, Subramaniam said, adding that there was also a need for us to ensure that we did not violate any advertising policies of the platforms that we chose to advertise on.

Nevertheless, India also has other possible avenues of advertising like YouTube influencers and emails. In addition, there are certain restrictions that might not apply when it comes to bland brand building.

It was interesting and intriguing for us, he went on, to step into a market like India. However, we had the fullest confidence that we would be able to address the market because we were approaching the market with something we were assured that Indians would love… Which is cricket! We surely believe that in the future, the market for NFTs should be global and any country should be able to sell NFTs in any other country, Subramaniam said.

One of the key factors that will enable this kind of global commerce without any slips or skirmishes is having a uniform legal code with respect to NFT buying and selling. If that is established (although it might sound like a utopia) it would be a great day for every NFT creator and collector across the globe. After all, it's not this watch that blockchain technology endeavored to achieve?

Amanjot Malhotra, Country Head - India, Bitay, says, "With the increasing popularity of Non Fungible Tokens (NFTs) and their trading in cryptocurrencies, one of the foremost questions that arise is in relation to the regulation of these transactions. Although, right now we see a big drop in NFT purchases all over the world, not just in India."

How will Bitay compete in the market?

We will be working very closely with artists and creators and providing them a lot of support in terms of selling their collection in the market, which is the biggest pain point for any creator right now. We already have a large verified user base couple that with exposure to markets like Turkey, Estonia, India, and the MENA region Bitay NFT Marketplace is one of the best places for any creator to launch their NFT collection, Bitay's Indian head Amanjot Malhotra replied.

We are also entering emerging markets of the Turkish connection such as Azerbaijan and other neighbouring countries. Once we enter those markets we will have a much stronger base of the user which will experience crypto for the first time. Apart from the Global expansion, we are also launching our Token launch pad where we will be launching projects on our exchange and executing their IEOs, Malhotra said.

We have received an immense response for the same and we are looking forward to launching Indian Projects on our launch pad, Malhotra added

The NFT market is evolving. In the year 2021, the overall trading market volume of Non-Fungible Tokens (NFTs) exceeded almost $21 billion. According to Google trends, the analysis indicated that the interest in NFTs was much more than any other topic in cryptocurrency. While 2021 was all about the world opening up to the possibilities of NFTs; 2022 has the downfall of the market and the interest in NFTs dropped to a new low.

But NFTs are here to stay and the market will move towards more utilitarian NFTs such as GameFi NFTs, Asset-backed NFTs, and others which will hold their value much more than the current trend of NFTs. Overall, we will see a much more mature market once we are through this bear market and we enter the next bull run, Malhotra said. The next generation of NFTs will be very exciting and almost everyone is looking forward to them.