#1 WTF is Metaverse? WTF is with Nikhil Kamath ft. Tanmay Bhat, Umang Bedi & Aprameya Radhakrishna

Nikhil Kamath 0:00 It's funny how I suddenly feel conscious when the camera is on, and I know about it, right? [laughing]

Speaker 0:03 Yeah.

Nikhil Kamath 0:04 Like, I was so happy talking, like, before that. [laughing]

Speaker 0:07 Uh, yeah. Why do you want to touch dinosaurs? Anyway, uh [laughing]

Aprameya Radhakrishna 0:10 [laughing]

Nikhil Kamath 0:12 How do I compete with that?

Aprameya Radhakrishna 0:14 [laughing] I think I made two jokes, and now he's gone on this angle, and he won't stop. [laughing]

Speaker 0:17 [laughing]

Tanmay Bhat 0:17 We want people under the age of 18 to watch this one. [upbeat music]

Speaker 0:27 First, nothing is going to work until I just maybe sleep better. So maybe I should try that thing.

Aprameya Radhakrishna 0:32 Mm.

Speaker 0:32 So maybe at 110, I'm going to call you, Nikhil, and be like, "Yo!" [laughing]

Aprameya Radhakrishna 0:36 [laughing]

Speaker 0:36 "That Wegovy thing you were talking about."

Nikhil Kamath 0:37 But is there a number when it changes? Like, is six not enough and eight enough? Did you have that?

Speaker 0:43 Like sleep?

Aprameya Radhakrishna 0:43 Yeah.

Tanmay Bhat 0:44 Eight. Eight is a good number.

Aprameya Radhakrishna 0:46 Yeah.

Tanmay Bhat 0:47 Uh, you should go close enough to eight-

Nikhil Kamath 0:50 Mm.

Tanmay Bhat 0:50 ... uh, and if you don't, you just make it a habit.

Speaker 0:53 Bro, Nikhil, if you sleep eight hours, you are going to trade like a madman. [laughing]

Tanmay Bhat 0:57 Yeah. [laughing]

Aprameya Radhakrishna 0:58 [laughing]

Speaker 0:58 You're going to all of a sudden be like, "65% profit today!" Dude, if you slept eight hours, you would be short [censored] one week ago. [laughing] Like, you wouldn't know this shit.

Tanmay Bhat 1:07 [laughing]

Nikhil Kamath 1:08 No, it's just that some random crap on TV, some book, some game on my phone, these are the things that keep me up.

Speaker 1:15 Doesn't-

Nikhil Kamath 1:15 It's not some fancy work.

Speaker 1:16 Doesn't Nithin, like, sleep really well? He speaks a lot about health.

Nikhil Kamath 1:19 No, he doesn't. He, like, he gets, like, maybe six hours or seven max, pushing it.

Speaker 1:25 Hmm. Goodness-

Nikhil Kamath 1:26 He sleeps early, wakes up early, but...

Tanmay Bhat 1:28 That's what I do.

Aprameya Radhakrishna 1:29 Yeah.

Tanmay Bhat 1:30 I'm in bed by 10:30.

Speaker 1:31 How much do you sleep?

Aprameya Radhakrishna 1:32 I sleep, like, easy eight hours.

Speaker 1:35 Really?

Aprameya Radhakrishna 1:36 I don't wake up at all.

Tanmay Bhat 1:37 You sleep?

Aprameya Radhakrishna 1:37 Yeah.

Nikhil Kamath 1:37 So Aprameya-

Aprameya Radhakrishna 1:38 So that's-

Nikhil Kamath 1:38 ... is a genuinely very well-rounded guy.

Aprameya Radhakrishna 1:41 [laughing]

Nikhil Kamath 1:42 You know, everything is right about him.

Tanmay Bhat 1:43 [laughing]

Nikhil Kamath 1:43 Like, you know, the college he went to, what he did at work-

Tanmay Bhat 1:46 [laughing]

Nikhil Kamath 1:46 ... his wife, his daughter. Like-

Tanmay Bhat 1:48 He's perfect

Nikhil Kamath 1:48 ... generally, he's a very well-rounded guy. [laughing]

Speaker 1:51 Eight hours? Like, a lot.

Aprameya Radhakrishna 1:52 Eight hours, yeah.

Tanmay Bhat 1:53 Yeah.

Aprameya Radhakrishna 1:53 Like, I sleep-

Nikhil Kamath 1:54 He sings. He's in a band. He has a band.

Aprameya Radhakrishna 1:56 Yeah, I'll sleep at 12:00, and I'll wake up by 8:00, and I'm, I'm ready.

Speaker 2:00 And how, how do you wake up, though? Like, how do you guys wake up?

Tanmay Bhat 2:03 Without an alarm.

Speaker 2:04 Without an alarm?

Nikhil Kamath 2:05 With an alarm.

Speaker 2:06 Without-

Nikhil Kamath 2:06 With many alarms.

Speaker 2:07 Oh, Sebi doesn't call you to wake you up?

Nikhil Kamath 2:09 No, no.

Tanmay Bhat 2:10 [laughing]

Nikhil Kamath 2:10 Starts at 7:00 a.m.-

Speaker 2:11 Sebi. [laughing]

Aprameya Radhakrishna 2:11 [laughing]

Nikhil Kamath 2:11 The first alarm is 7:00, the last one is 7:45 a.m. [laughing]

Tanmay Bhat 2:15 [laughing]

Nikhil Kamath 2:15 In between that, I have 10. [laughing]

Speaker 2:18 Amazing. But, uh, where- what year was this when you lost this weight?

Tanmay Bhat 2:23 2018.

Speaker 2:25 '18.

Tanmay Bhat 2:26 Actually, '17, middle to 18 June.

Speaker 2:29 Mm.

Tanmay Bhat 2:30 I've been constant largely from 18 June.

Speaker 2:31 And then did you start bulking up after that?

Tanmay Bhat 2:33 I did. I did. Uh, but then, you know, you can't maintain it at a constant rate. Uh, you have to kind of go up and down-

Speaker 2:43 Mm

Tanmay Bhat 2:43 ... uh, which is the right thing to do-

Speaker 2:44 Mm

Tanmay Bhat 2:44 ... because you can't, uh, train your body to do just one thing.

Speaker 2:47 Mm.

Aprameya Radhakrishna 2:48 I've had a peak weight, dude. I've, I've weighed 115. I've gone down to 90, and I've come back to 95, 96 right now.

Speaker 2:58 What, what took you to 115?

Aprameya Radhakrishna 3:00 115 was my first start-up, [laughing] TaxiForSure. So I would, I would eat at home. I would eat another breakfast after I reached, uh, office-

Speaker 3:09 Office

Aprameya Radhakrishna 3:09 ... because I, I would have gone at 8:00, 9:00 o'clock.

Speaker 3:13 Mm.

Aprameya Radhakrishna 3:13 Uh, then I would eat two lunches because I would, I would have taken my lunch box-

Tanmay Bhat 3:17 Another-1

Aprameya Radhakrishna 3:17 ... and I had a team lunch or some, you know, meeting or something.

Nikhil Kamath 3:20 Hey, why don't you guys introduce yourself a little bit?

Aprameya Radhakrishna 3:23 [chuckles]

Nikhil Kamath 3:23 Everybody knows Tanmay.

Aprameya Radhakrishna 3:24 Yeah.

Nikhil Kamath 3:25 So he needs no introduction.

Tanmay Bhat 3:26 Yeah, I was going to-

Aprameya Radhakrishna 3:26 [chuckles]

Nikhil Kamath 3:27 But maybe, like, do 30 seconds.

Aprameya Radhakrishna 3:29 Yeah. Uh, I'm Aprameya, and, uh, I- I'm from Bangalore. I'm a Kannadiga. Um, I, you know, I'm known as w- most known as an entrepreneur. Uh, I ran... I founded and ran TaxiForSure before this, sold to Ola. [laughing] Uh, now I run Koo, uh, which is, uh, a social media platform competing against Twitter, uh, globally. So that's me.

Speaker 3:52 How are you feeling about Elon?

Aprameya Radhakrishna 3:53 Elon is awesome. [laughing]

Speaker 3:56 Yeah?

Aprameya Radhakrishna 3:56 As in, whatever he does makes news, and that makes microblogging sexier than what it was.

Tanmay Bhat 4:00 [laughing]

Speaker 4:01 Mm.

Aprameya Radhakrishna 4:01 And, uh, we're in the same space.

Speaker 4:03 Love it. Nice. [laughing]

Aprameya Radhakrishna 4:03 [laughing]

Nikhil Kamath 4:03 So Elon has been good for Koo?

Aprameya Radhakrishna 4:05 Absolutely.

Tanmay Bhat 4:06 I think so.

Aprameya Radhakrishna 4:06 So I think, uh-

Tanmay Bhat 4:07 Of course.

Aprameya Radhakrishna 4:09 [stammers] So he's taken it more West than what it was already-

Speaker 4:12 Mm. Yeah

Aprameya Radhakrishna 4:13 ... and we're more, you know, languages. We're more-

Speaker 4:15 Mm

Aprameya Radhakrishna 4:16 ... uh, adapting to countries. We're more creator-focused in terms of, you know, we want creators to monetize better. Uh, we want to give them more tools, you know, all of those things. So I think we're, we're kind of, like, the opposite of what Twitter has been. And, you know, we don't know where Elon is taking Twitter right now, so it's, it's all good.

Speaker 4:34 Aprameya probably has his notifications on for Elon's tweets. [laughing]

Tanmay Bhat 4:37 [laughing]

Aprameya Radhakrishna 4:37 [laughing]

Speaker 4:38 And every time Elon is tweeting out some feature, Aprameya is like: "Tried that. Doesn't work, Elon." [laughing]

Tanmay Bhat 4:41 [laughing]

Aprameya Radhakrishna 4:41 [laughing]

Speaker 4:41 "I already did that."

Nikhil Kamath 4:42 But you know what he was telling me the other day? In Brazil, apparently, the politicians Koo first and then tweet.

Aprameya Radhakrishna 4:48 Yeah.

Tanmay Bhat 4:48 Mm. Interesting.

Nikhil Kamath 4:49 Right?

Tanmay Bhat 4:49 Wow!

Speaker 4:49 That's insane.

Aprameya Radhakrishna 4:50 The, the president of Brazil is on, on Koo. Uh, you know, the, the people love Koo there.

Speaker 4:56 Mm.

Aprameya Radhakrishna 4:57 Like, a friend of mine was in- was at the World Cup, and he found- he was in the Brazil match, and he found some Brazilians who were taking photos. He asked them, "Is this going on Instagram?" They said, "No, we have a new network called Koo." So-

Tanmay Bhat 5:09 Very cool

Aprameya Radhakrishna 5:10 ... it's, it's really-

Speaker 5:11 What happened, that all of a sudden-

Aprameya Radhakrishna 5:13 Yeah

Speaker 5:13 ... you went vertical in Brazil?

Aprameya Radhakrishna 5:15 So we, we keep doing our hacky things, right? Like, one thing we do is, you know, we keep advertising articles about us.

Speaker 5:23 Mm-hmm.

Aprameya Radhakrishna 5:24 One article is second-largest microblog in the world, and we kept advertising that to journalists in across the world. And one Brazil journalist who's famous picked it up and started talking.

Speaker 5:35 Nice.

Aprameya Radhakrishna 5:36 And another thing that added to it, uh, of course, they were looking for an alternative, th-

Speaker 5:41 Mm

Aprameya Radhakrishna 5:41 ... than Twitter. And third one is, which was the most important, which is why it became viral, is because, uh, Koo means ass-

Tanmay Bhat 5:49 [laughing] Oh, yeah

Aprameya Radhakrishna 5:50 ... in Portuguese.

Tanmay Bhat 5:51 I know that. I know that.

Nikhil Kamath 5:51 Really?

Aprameya Radhakrishna 5:52 Yeah.

Nikhil Kamath 5:52 I didn't know that.

Tanmay Bhat 5:53 Oh.

Aprameya Radhakrishna 5:53 So it, it, it became cool to actually talk about it.

Speaker 5:57 Ah.

Aprameya Radhakrishna 5:57 Follow my Koo.

Tanmay Bhat 5:59 Oh!

Speaker 5:59 Oh, amazing. Amazing.

Aprameya Radhakrishna 6:00 Right? So-

Nikhil Kamath 6:01 So, Tanmay, what have you been up to of late?... Everybody has seen you on TV, on many different platforms for more than a decade now?

Tanmay Bhat 6:10 Mm.

6:11 If I'm on TV, it's probably bad news. [laughing]

Nikhil Kamath 6:15 [laughing] But not many people know-

Tanmay Bhat 6:18 Mm

Nikhil Kamath 6:18 ... that you're very popular amongst the fairer sex as well.

Tanmay Bhat 6:23 Oh, my God!

Nikhil Kamath 6:23 Especially with the weight loss and all of that.

Tanmay Bhat 6:25 Oh, my God.

Nikhil Kamath 6:26 Tell us a bit about that and how it works. [laughing]

Tanmay Bhat 6:30 Wow! Weren't we, weren't we going to talk about the metaverse, guys? [laughing] [upbeat music] So Nikhil is the worst wingman in the world.

6:43 [laughing]

6:43 Okay, he's the worst wingman. Okay, I so... I told Nikhil, "I'm single-"

Nikhil Kamath 6:46 What help do you need? Like, you're already getting everything you need, right?

Tanmay Bhat 6:50 [laughing]

6:50 I was... So I told Nikhil, saying, "I'm single, and I'm, you know, I'm trying to date."

6:53 Yeah.

6:53 And so we're, we're at- we're having a get-together at Nikhil's house, okay?

6:57 [chuckles]

6:57 And I'm talking to some girl. Nikhil shows up and he's like: "Hey, have you met Tanmay? He's very attractive to the opposite sex." [laughing]

7:04 [laughing]

Nikhil Kamath 7:04 [laughing]

Tanmay Bhat 7:04 I'm like: "What are you doing? This is not how you wingman. You just cue and you leave." [laughing]

7:10 [laughing]

7:11 I don't think I'm very alpha in that sense. I'm known for, "Oh, he laughs."

Nikhil Kamath 7:16 Women like that?

Tanmay Bhat 7:18 Harmless. [laughing]

Nikhil Kamath 7:22 [laughing] You don't-

Tanmay Bhat 7:22 A harmless, harmless guy who's laughing and attractive. And attractive.

Nikhil Kamath 7:27 And losing weight, by the way.

Tanmay Bhat 7:28 Just, just to be clear, no one's watching me for the attractiveness.

7:31 [chuckles] He's harmless.

7:32 [chuckles]

7:33 He's laughing at memes. Why not?

Nikhil Kamath 7:35 But once they watch you, you automatically become even more attractive, right? When you meet them in person. [laughing]

Tanmay Bhat 7:40 [laughing]

7:42 What a pathetic man you are!

7:44 Yes, first time you-

7:45 He, he got... He- I made two jokes, and now he's found his angle, and he won't stop. [laughing]

Nikhil Kamath 7:51 [laughing] I've seen that people pay money to watch other people eat food.

Tanmay Bhat 7:55 Yeah.

Nikhil Kamath 7:55 It's a thing.

Tanmay Bhat 7:55 Yeah?

Nikhil Kamath 7:56 Yeah.

Tanmay Bhat 7:56 So why-

Nikhil Kamath 7:57 But I don't think people like us. [laughing]

Tanmay Bhat 7:59 Why is making a-

7:59 Maybe that's my question. [laughing]

Umang Bedi 8:01 No, dude, but this is true in some sense. I met a friend of mine in sch- from school after 30 years in New York this time.

Nikhil Kamath 8:08 Mm.

Umang Bedi 8:08 Okay? And she wanted to eat, um, a hot dog from one of those stands-

Nikhil Kamath 8:14 Mm

Umang Bedi 8:14 ... outside New York, and I didn't realize that there are so many varieties of-

Tanmay Bhat 8:17 Hot dogs

Umang Bedi 8:17 ... uh, hot dogs there, right? And she's like... [chomping] And it's really big. You can't eat it with one hand-

Tanmay Bhat 8:24 Mm

Umang Bedi 8:24 ... and it's pretty messy. But apparently, and I Googled this and saw it, she basically came back to me and said, "The hottest thing about Tom Cruise is him eating."

Tanmay Bhat 8:35 Mm.

Umang Bedi 8:35 And I was like: "What?"

Nikhil Kamath 8:36 My God! I'd never- [laughing]

Umang Bedi 8:37 That's the first time in my life. Now, this is a woman telling me, so I'm going to believe it.

Nikhil Kamath 8:40 Uh-

Umang Bedi 8:40 She's like: "Why don't you just Google search Tom Cruise eating?" Right, and-

Tanmay Bhat 8:46 [laughing]

Umang Bedi 8:46 ... in every movie, by the way, from Meet Joe Black to Top Gun, he's eating.

Tanmay Bhat 8:50 Dude, he-

Nikhil Kamath 8:50 Maybe we should just catch up and eat food. [laughing]

Tanmay Bhat 8:53 [laughing]

Nikhil Kamath 8:54 Is it really that much?

Umang Bedi 8:54 There are women who watch him? Where are they? [laughing]

Tanmay Bhat 8:56 Umang, what does your company do?

Umang Bedi 8:59 So we have a family of apps. Uh, one is in news, which is Dailyhunt.

Tanmay Bhat 9:03 Mm.

Umang Bedi 9:03 Uh, it's the largest news aggregator.

Tanmay Bhat 9:05 Dailyhunt, yeah.

Umang Bedi 9:05 Right. Uh, in 16 different local languages. Then the other, we launched at the ban of TikTok in India. Uh-

Tanmay Bhat 9:11 You launched the ban?

Umang Bedi 9:13 No, no. So [laughing] at-

Tanmay Bhat 9:14 [laughing]

Nikhil Kamath 9:14 [laughing]

Umang Bedi 9:14 Sorry, at the ban, at the-

Tanmay Bhat 9:16 Oh!

Nikhil Kamath 9:16 Maybe secretly.

Umang Bedi 9:17 Uh, of TikTok in India-

Tanmay Bhat 9:18 Uh

Umang Bedi 9:18 ... we launched Josh.

Tanmay Bhat 9:19 Oh, yeah, of course. Josh.

Umang Bedi 9:20 Josh.

Tanmay Bhat 9:20 Yeah.

Umang Bedi 9:21 Yeah.

Tanmay Bhat 9:21 Yeah.

Umang Bedi 9:21 So that's us.

Tanmay Bhat 9:22 Yeah.

Umang Bedi 9:22 And we have a third app called Public Vibes-

Tanmay Bhat 9:25 Okay

Umang Bedi 9:25 ... uh, which is a hyperlocal, video-only content app in 15 different languages.

Nikhil Kamath 9:30 They raised money at some ridiculous-

Umang Bedi 9:32 Huh?

Nikhil Kamath 9:32 They raised money at some ridiculous number. You didn't see? It was all over the news, right?

Umang Bedi 9:37 I, I-

Nikhil Kamath 9:38 Some 7 billion, 8 billion, something like that.

Umang Bedi 9:40 Five, five.

Tanmay Bhat 9:40 Yeah, Dailyhunt is huge, right?

Nikhil Kamath 9:42 Mm.

Tanmay Bhat 9:42 Uh, yeah, Josh is also huge.

Nikhil Kamath 9:44 How many people work at Dailyhunt now?

Umang Bedi 9:46 Employees is 2,700. Uh...

Tanmay Bhat 9:48 Wow!

Umang Bedi 9:49 But I think the creator ecosystem that we work with is about 150,000 people on the Dailyhunt side.

Tanmay Bhat 9:56 Mm.

Umang Bedi 9:57 Um, and millions of people on

Umang Bedi 9:59 the Josh side.

Nikhil Kamath 9:59 Can I ask you a question? Do you think old-school media is dying, and these creators will take over?

Tanmay Bhat 10:06 You're, like, five years late on this question. [laughing]

Umang Bedi 10:09 [laughing]

Tanmay Bhat 10:09 [laughing]

Nikhil Kamath 10:09 You think it's answered already?

Tanmay Bhat 10:11 Old... What is old-school media-

Umang Bedi 10:12 Absolutely

Tanmay Bhat 10:12 ... yeah, right?

Nikhil Kamath 10:13 Like TV channels, newspapers, The Economist, BBC.

Tanmay Bhat 10:20 Um, please, Umang, your- it's your question.

Umang Bedi 10:23 I'd love to go after you, [chuckles] because I'm in the midst of the storm. But, okay, my two cents: I think, uh, at a high level, any business, and there's a little bit of, uh... If you don't transform yourself every five to seven years, you're gonna die, right? So-

Tanmay Bhat 10:38 Mm

Umang Bedi 10:38 ... the average lifespan of any company on S&P is 15 years. So all businesses, in my mind, are destined to die, however grave that sounds, right? But coming to the specific question-

Nikhil Kamath 10:51 But they've been around for, like, what, 100 years?

Umang Bedi 10:52 They've been around for years, right? But if you also think about where the world has come from, right, the first way that people got access to information was the newspaper, right? And so it kind of liberated society at so many levels-

Tanmay Bhat 11:05 Of course

Umang Bedi 11:06 ... right? Uh, from the world that we came from, which was more dictate, you know, land of dictators and rulers, and so on and so forth. So it had its place and time, but if you look at any place in the world, newspaper readership is dying-

Tanmay Bhat 11:22 Mm

Umang Bedi 11:22 ... uh, print circulation is dying or slowly dying. But a lot of the smart companies are morphing to go behind the firewall or, sorry, behind the paywall [popping] with very premium content.

Nikhil Kamath 11:33 Right.

Umang Bedi 11:33 And you named Economist, New York Times is a great example.

Nikhil Kamath 11:35 Mm.

Umang Bedi 11:35 So my view is that newspapers will have to morph their model. It can be a add-on, but their main business will be, you know, it'll have to go, uh, and be digitally driven. TV, I'm a lot more positive about, uh-

Nikhil Kamath 11:49 Why is that?

Umang Bedi 11:50 ... because TV and digital kind of work together. TV is kind of morphing into a digital device, right?

Nikhil Kamath 11:54 Yes.

Umang Bedi 11:55 All TVs are becoming Android or Apple TVs-

Nikhil Kamath 11:58 Mm

Umang Bedi 11:58 ... or smart TVs, right? So-

Nikhil Kamath 11:59 But you don't mean TV news channels, you mean content on TV?

Umang Bedi 12:02 I mean content, right? So if you think about it today, what is TV? TV is basically, it's coming through broadcast.

Nikhil Kamath 12:07 Right.

Umang Bedi 12:07 So broadcast will go away.

Aprameya Radhakrishna 12:09 ... uh, it'll all become IP-based, right?

Nikhil Kamath 12:12 Mm.

Aprameya Radhakrishna 12:13 Um, and so, you know, for instance, you and I read the Business Today, right?

Nikhil Kamath 12:18 Mm.

Aprameya Radhakrishna 12:18 I didn't even know, um, Business Today is a partner on Dailyhunt, so that's how I got to know.

Nikhil Kamath 12:22 Mm.

Aprameya Radhakrishna 12:22 But they launched a TV channel, which is pure IP.

Nikhil Kamath 12:25 Mm.

Aprameya Radhakrishna 12:25 And it's just... So it's not on YouTube, it's a, uh, it's beamed onto TVs through IP and through an app, right?

Nikhil Kamath 12:34 Oh.

Aprameya Radhakrishna 12:34 So it's quite an interesting, uh, play that I think all TVs ultimately will become smart-

Nikhil Kamath 12:38 Mm, mm.

Speaker 12:39 Mm

Aprameya Radhakrishna 12:39 ... right? Uh-

Speaker 12:39 No, they're already there, actually.

Aprameya Radhakrishna 12:40 They're already there.

Speaker 12:41 Yeah, I have a TV, but I haven't seen what's being broadcasted. I choose what I-

Aprameya Radhakrishna 12:46 Mm.

Nikhil Kamath 12:46 Exactly

Speaker 12:46 ... choose what I watch.

Nikhil Kamath 12:47 How did, how did the Bitcoin rut and the whole crypto winter, in a way, affect the influencers? 'Cause they were sponsoring a lot of them, right?

Speaker 12:57 Yeah, there were some cases of, there were some cases of, you know, an exchange went down, couple of influencers had done deals.

Aprameya Radhakrishna 13:06 Really?

Speaker 13:06 Uh, I know in, in, in America, a lot of influencers participated in, like, open sh- open pump and dump, right?

Nikhil Kamath 13:13 Mm.

Speaker 13:13 Like, people have- people on Twitter, they pointed out that, you know, said influencer said, "Buy here," and then said, "Sell here." Uh, and when they said, when they said buy, you could see their wallet, their wallet selling when they said buy, and that kind of thing. So those guys got wrecked. In fact, the biggest one was Logan Paul. That was the biggest news. So it was the news the last couple of months. He launched an NFT project, then another independent investigative YouTuber called Coffeezilla, made a four-part series that got over 30 billion views.

Nikhil Kamath 13:47 30 billion views?

Speaker 13:47 30 million views. 30 million views, um, saying that how Logan Paul scammed his followers. Logan Paul was forced to come out and address the thing, and he apologized, and he said, "I'm gonna, I'm gonna make this project right." He had launched a crypto game, so to say.

Nikhil Kamath 14:03 Mm.

Speaker 14:03 So the winter was pretty bad. Uh, a lot of YouTubers had a, had a ton of trouble. In general, influencers would be better off supporting developer initiatives over any kind of, any kind of, um, shilling of any kind of token. I think that's, that's just the smarter route to go. It's also the more productive route, and you find yourself in a new community, and they'll actually appreciate you, 'cause very few mainstream influencers actually talk to developers, so to say. So when I make- [chuckles] ... some sort of coding joke, they feel like, "Oh, my God, this is about, this is about me. I didn't even think he would be, he'd be interested." Um, yeah, I think that's, that... I think that's fair.

Aprameya Radhakrishna 14:46 Right. So you know how there was only DD on TV?

Nikhil Kamath 14:50 Mm.

Speaker 14:51 Yeah.

Aprameya Radhakrishna 14:51 And everybody had to only watch that-

Nikhil Kamath 14:54 Mm

Aprameya Radhakrishna 14:54 ... and they had no choice. So... And then channels came up, everybody picked their channel. Now, you can subscribe to different channels. So that's what's gonna happen overall. Some channels you won't even know exists.

Nikhil Kamath 15:08 Mm.

Aprameya Radhakrishna 15:08 You will only pick... So personalization, as he said, is gonna go up. Uh, people will... You know, you'll live in a world of sports and never come out, and you'll not even know who Shah Rukh Khan is, right? Like, again, 15, 20 years ago, a movie would launch on Friday. Nobody... Nothing else was there.

Speaker 15:28 Correct.

Aprameya Radhakrishna 15:28 Everybody would go to the movie.

Speaker 15:30 Correct.

Aprameya Radhakrishna 15:30 Right? Now, that craze is gone. [clears throat] Like, Friday morning, l- we don't even associate it with-

Nikhil Kamath 15:35 Yeah

Aprameya Radhakrishna 15:35 ... with a movie

Nikhil Kamath 15:36 ... movie, movie releases anymore, right? TikTok is like a micro Bollywood movie.

Aprameya Radhakrishna 15:42 Josh.

Nikhil Kamath 15:42 Oh, [laughing] Josh.

Speaker 15:45 [laughing]

Aprameya Radhakrishna 15:45 [laughing]

Nikhil Kamath 15:46 Josh- [laughing] ... is, is, is a micro Bollywood movie.

Aprameya Radhakrishna 15:50 I will Koo that. [laughing]

Nikhil Kamath 15:52 [laughing]

Speaker 15:52 [laughing]

Nikhil Kamath 15:53 I'm not selling anything today. [laughing]

Aprameya Radhakrishna 15:55 [laughing]

Nikhil Kamath 15:56 Tanmay?

Speaker 15:56 No.

Aprameya Radhakrishna 15:57 You're just shorting some stocks.

Speaker 15:59 No, no.

Aprameya Radhakrishna 15:59 No? [laughing]

Nikhil Kamath 16:01 [laughing]

Speaker 16:04 [laughing]

Nikhil Kamath 16:05 Yeah, so you, you were making a point.

Aprameya Radhakrishna 16:07 Yeah, so I, I was just saying, you know, the, the guy who entertains us for 30 seconds on a short video app, right? You will never watch him in a three-hour movie, right?

Nikhil Kamath 16:19 Mm.

Aprameya Radhakrishna 16:19 You- only Shah Rukh Khan can do a three-hour movie and get our attention. So that's been split into, you know, millions of people who are talented for 30 seconds and can entertain us for three hours.

Nikhil Kamath 16:29 Yeah. So the framework was that any platform that enables you to be a rock star-

Aprameya Radhakrishna 16:34 Yeah

Nikhil Kamath 16:34 ... okay, that, uh, those took prominence. So f- and the barrier to become a rock star kept getting lower and lower over the last couple of decades. It began with, [clears throat] you know, YouTube, where-

Speaker 16:48 Can I tell you, I went to have a drink with Tanmay once-

Nikhil Kamath 16:51 Mm-hmm

Speaker 16:51 ... to a bar, okay? People were hounding him, like, he was like Shah Rukh Khan.

Nikhil Kamath 16:55 [chuckles] Yeah.

Aprameya Radhakrishna 16:55 When was this?

Speaker 16:56 Things have changed. When we went to that place on St. Mark's Road.

Nikhil Kamath 16:58 Oh, yeah, okay, okay.

Speaker 17:00 There were, like, 40, 50 of them.

Aprameya Radhakrishna 17:01 You're making a story up now.

Speaker 17:02 No! [chuckles] How many? 40, 50 people-

Nikhil Kamath 17:05 Yeah

Speaker 17:05 ... easy.

Nikhil Kamath 17:06 Yeah, I mean, whatever.

Speaker 17:07 Yeah, yeah.

Aprameya Radhakrishna 17:08 But Tanmay, if you made a movie-

Speaker 17:10 Hmm, I have a couple of scripts, actually. [laughing]

Nikhil Kamath 17:13 [chuckles]

Aprameya Radhakrishna 17:13 Ah, that would be a good experiment. [chuckles]

Speaker 17:15 The point-

Nikhil Kamath 17:16 If you had to make a movie, what would you make it about?

Speaker 17:19 Um, I would- it would- I would make it for digital.

Nikhil Kamath 17:22 We want people under the age of 18 to watch this one. [laughing]

Aprameya Radhakrishna 17:26 [laughing]

Speaker 17:26 Uh, that I don't guarantee-

Nikhil Kamath 17:27 [laughing]

Speaker 17:27 ... that my movie will be for peop- folks under 18. But I would make it for digital. I would make something funny.

Nikhil Kamath 17:33 Mm.

Speaker 17:33 Uh, and how I would optimize this, 'cause in life, I am, uh, I am, uh, uh, un- un- what, underpromise, overdeliver kind of person.

Nikhil Kamath 17:41 Mm.

Speaker 17:41 Um, so I would do a low budget, something that makes whatever OTT platform who's buying it feel like, "Oh, this person comes with a certain distribution."

Aprameya Radhakrishna 17:51 Mm.

Nikhil Kamath 17:53 Mm.

Speaker 17:53 "And for that, this value was great," so I get to do-

Nikhil Kamath 17:57 Mm

Speaker 17:57 ... I get to do more. Um-

Aprameya Radhakrishna 17:59 Mm.

Nikhil Kamath 17:59 Mm. That makes a lot of sense.

Speaker 18:00 Yeah.

Aprameya Radhakrishna 18:00 Yeah.

Speaker 18:00 So this is, this is, this is how I would do it. In fact, the gen... I, I called it many years ago when a lot of these OTT platforms were coming. I had a bunch of meetings with them, and I kept telling them then, saying, "Listen to me-... the way for you to guarantee distribution is to find other people who have distribution.

Aprameya Radhakrishna 18:16 Distribution.

Speaker 18:16 Just get them to make shit.

Aprameya Radhakrishna 18:18 Mm.

Speaker 18:18 It's going to work.

Aprameya Radhakrishna 18:19 Yep.

Speaker 18:19 Cut to today, we see Bhuwan Bam's show-

Aprameya Radhakrishna 18:22 Yeah

Speaker 18:22 ... number one on the platform for three weeks straight.

Aprameya Radhakrishna 18:25 Mm.

Speaker 18:26 Cut to Bassey just posted 10 minutes ago, trending number one in India. Zakir Khan, last three specials, trending number one in India for three weeks straight.

Aprameya Radhakrishna 18:34 Mm.

Speaker 18:34 Uh, like, that thesis completely played out. Number one podcast on Spotify, run by a gamer who has 12 million people following him on YouTube.

Aprameya Radhakrishna 18:43 Yeah.

Speaker 18:43 Um, so yeah, so like I was saying, that the barrier to become a rock star kept getting lower, and lower, and lower. Uh, so, you know, so the question that I keep asking myself is: what's the next, what's the next thing where the barrier to entry becomes so low that everybody's able to do it?

Aprameya Radhakrishna 19:00 Do it.

Speaker 19:02 Yeah, yeah.

Nikhil Kamath 19:03 Okay, I had a bunch of questions about the Metaverse. I looked online and good- did not get good answers, right? Like, everything was too confusing. Uh, I watched a bunch of videos, including the one from Mark Zuckerberg, uh, which was, like, two hours long or something like that.

Speaker 19:19 Mm-hmm.

Nikhil Kamath 19:20 And I was researching the Meta stock, in all fairness, for the last six months, uh, at the valuation not of today, but of one and a half, two months ago. I thought it was fairly valued, 13, 14 times multiples. Uh, for context, they were earning X amount of money. The company's value was 14X, and in India, most of the tech companies you invest in, in our ecosystem-

Speaker 19:44 Yeah

Nikhil Kamath 19:44 ... the startup ecosystem, you have to add, like, one or two zeros on top of that.

Speaker 19:48 Yeah, 14X is cheap, actually. [chuckles]

Nikhil Kamath 19:50 Yeah. [chuckles] And in many ways, they spend a lot more on innovation than many of the companies here. So the stock looked very appealing to me. And, uh, credit to be given to Mark for all the acquisitions he has made in the past.

Speaker 20:04 Oh, yeah, yeah.

Nikhil Kamath 20:05 More often than not, he might have appeared wrong initially, but eventually, he turned out to be right.

Speaker 20:10 No, but a decade later-

Nikhil Kamath 20:12 Mm

Speaker 20:12 ... if you look at all the things that Zuck got right.

Aprameya Radhakrishna 20:15 He bought. Yeah.

Speaker 20:15 The amount of, the amount of shit that was flung at Zuck for the last decade, and today you look at him, and you realize, "Holy shit, he's gotten so many things right." And he's been attacked for things that are not important.

Aprameya Radhakrishna 20:27 Mm.

Speaker 20:27 Like, after Elon took over Twitter, right? Censorship, this, that, and all.

Aprameya Radhakrishna 20:31 Mm.

Speaker 20:31 All of a sudden, Zuck looks like the nice guy. He took everything-

Nikhil Kamath 20:34 [chuckles]

Speaker 20:34 ... without saying a word, without leaning into the chaos, like, like Elon did.

Aprameya Radhakrishna 20:38 Yeah.

Speaker 20:38 The other thing is, that we're talking, the Metaverse became such a massive deal, part of which is because Facebook became Meta, right? Like, that's a... It's a big, bold step. Like, you know, I can't help but think about, all right, Apple has attacked Facebook's ad strategy by the whole privacy thing on-

Aprameya Radhakrishna 20:56 Mm

Speaker 20:56 ... on the iPhone. Uh, Apple's biggest advantage is they have a hardware device. Zuck just needs to ma- if you are- he has to ensure the next 20, 20, 20, 25 years, he needs to get hardware right.

Aprameya Radhakrishna 21:09 Yeah.

Speaker 21:09 And his big bet is-

Aprameya Radhakrishna 21:11 Oculus

Speaker 21:12 ... Oculus or, or the Metaverse-

Aprameya Radhakrishna 21:13 Yeah

Speaker 21:13 ... which is, it's gonna be a thing where we all sit down, and-

Aprameya Radhakrishna 21:16 Yeah

Speaker 21:16 ... we're just always constantly gonna be in it.

Aprameya Radhakrishna 21:19 Mm.

Speaker 21:19 Um, which we kind of are already, 'cause, uh, my screen time is, like, 10 hours a day on the phone. Uh-

Nikhil Kamath 21:25 So let's, let's try and dis- define what Metaverse is, 'cause I still don't know.

Speaker 21:29 Yeah.

Nikhil Kamath 21:29 What is Metaverse? What is Metaverse to Apurv?

Aprameya Radhakrishna 21:33 So I think, uh, as I, I think Tanmay was about to say that, uh, today, we already disappear into a different universe, and that universe is based on our taste. Like, if I want to get into the lifestyle universe, I'll, I'll open Instagram, right? What people are eating, where they're going, you know, all of that is the universe of lifestyle that I live in, right? If I want to get into the world of thoughts and opinions, you'll log into a social network like a Koo, or a Twitter, or... You know, that's where you go in, and you live in that world of thoughts and opinions, and hence, the fights are more, opinions are more, you know? So we're logging into universes already, just that it is two-dimensional. It is, it is a very sad experie- while the experiences are great today on the phone-

Nikhil Kamath 22:24 So do you think you being on Instagram on your phone can also be called Metaverse?

Speaker 22:29 Mm, I think the hab- the metaversial habit is here, but what people... First of all, it's a made-up name.

Aprameya Radhakrishna 22:39 Yeah.

Speaker 22:39 It's a made-up word.

Nikhil Kamath 22:40 It's that novelist, right?

Speaker 22:41 Mm.

Nikhil Kamath 22:41 Who wrote that Snow Crash book.

Speaker 22:42 Correct.

Aprameya Radhakrishna 22:43 Yeah.

Nikhil Kamath 22:43 He came up with this.

Speaker 22:44 What was this? Where did this come from?

Nikhil Kamath 22:45 I think 20, 30 years ago. I can't remember his name.

Aprameya Radhakrishna 22:48 Yeah.

Speaker 22:48 Mm.

Nikhil Kamath 22:48 But I was watching his interview. He wrote a book called Snow Crash, in which he... I th- I hope the name is right, but in that, he described a version of the Metaverse, and I think it came from there.

Speaker 22:59 Correct.

Aprameya Radhakrishna 22:59 Mm.

Speaker 22:59 And a decade ago, there was a movie called Ready Player One-

Aprameya Radhakrishna 23:01 Yeah

Speaker 23:02 ... which was like, oh, you put something in, and-

Aprameya Radhakrishna 23:04 Yeah

Speaker 23:04 ... there's a version of this in-

Aprameya Radhakrishna 23:05 Yeah

Speaker 23:05 ... in The Matrix as well, which is, oh, you get plugged into this world via some device, where your, uh, your physical, your physical location is transformed into something.

Nikhil Kamath 23:16 Yeah. So do you think-

Speaker 23:17 Yeah

Nikhil Kamath 23:17 ... you have to be transformed into another location to truly call it Metaverse, or even your phone can qualify for Metaverse?

Aprameya Radhakrishna 23:24 Today, I think logging into our phone is a u- is a universe in itself, and each app is a universe, right?

Nikhil Kamath 23:32 Mm.

Aprameya Radhakrishna 23:32 And the more immersive that experience gets, the more meta it becomes.

Nikhil Kamath 23:37 Right.

Aprameya Radhakrishna 23:38 Right? So we're there. [smacks lips] Like, we're logging off reality, we're in the ph- everybody's looking like this, right? That's, that's already a, a metaversial ex- experience.

Nikhil Kamath 23:47 Would you agree with that?

Speaker 23:48 Yeah, I think the behavior, behavior is already, already there. But, I mean, have all of you tried Oculus?

Aprameya Radhakrishna 23:54 Yeah.

Nikhil Kamath 23:54 Yeah.

Aprameya Radhakrishna 23:55 Yeah.

Speaker 23:55 Look, there are moments where it's pretty [beep] amazing.

Nikhil Kamath 23:58 Yeah.

Speaker 23:58 Right?

Aprameya Radhakrishna 23:58 Yeah.

Speaker 23:58 And I truly feel like, holy shit, so many other things could be amazing if, if, if you could do it. Like, I've tried some fitness stuff, I've tried some music stuff.

Nikhil Kamath 24:07 I don't know what you're actually thinking of, but... [laughing]

Aprameya Radhakrishna 24:13 [laughing] We all do. We all do.

Speaker 24:14 No, but of course, any new, and it's like it's a-

Nikhil Kamath 24:16 The haptics are not in place yet.

Speaker 24:17 It's the, it's the, it's the Seinfeld joke, right? Which is, any new technology, that first thing-

Nikhil Kamath 24:22 [chuckles]

Speaker 24:22 ... it gets adapted to is [beep] .... in India, the version is it be- comes in a Punjabi song.

Umang Bedi 24:27 Yeah, exactly. [laughs]

Speaker 24:28 Punjabi music artists get it, get it first. So Snapchat's the thing, there's a song about Snapchat. That's why- how I buy- bought Bitcoin. I heard it in a Punjabi song once. [laughing]

Umang Bedi 24:36 [laughing]

Nikhil Kamath 24:36 [laughing] And Umang, what do you think is the metaverse?

Umang Bedi 24:39 So, you know, if you look at it from where it's defined, the way it's defined, it's three-dimensional, it's-

Nikhil Kamath 24:45 When somebody says metaverse, what is the first picture which comes in your head?

Umang Bedi 24:49 I think the first picture that comes, at least the way it's being sold and told, is, it's-

Nikhil Kamath 24:54 Also, you were the ex-India CEO of Meta-

Umang Bedi 24:56 Yeah

Nikhil Kamath 24:56 ... and Insta, so.

Umang Bedi 24:57 Yeah. So the way I look at it, Nikhil, is it's defined as something which is three-dimensional, and virtual, and augmented reality, and virtual reality, and all of those buzzwords. But I tend to think of, uh... And I actually defer on my opinion on the Oculus-

Nikhil Kamath 25:13 Mm

Umang Bedi 25:13 ... uh, even though Meta is a great company and everything else, right? But when you think about a device that is, one, so bulky, two, costs $400 or $500, whatever it does, the new version, right? It's, uh, for very few elite experiences, right? I- I'm, I'm gonna push, uh, Apu's thought a little bit in terms of what he said. So when you're getting into a phone, imagine a world wherein your phone and your browser or an app or whatever-

Nikhil Kamath 25:43 Mm

Umang Bedi 25:43 ... gave you a three-dimensional feel. Okay?

Nikhil Kamath 25:47 You had that cardboard box version or something, right?

Umang Bedi 25:49 Yeah, you had cardboard, and then, of course, Google introduced glasses and-

Nikhil Kamath 25:53 Mm.

Umang Bedi 25:53 At the end of the day, the form factor can keep shrinking, but it's really uncomfortable to wear something-

Nikhil Kamath 25:58 Mm

Umang Bedi 25:58 ... to experience something. So-

Nikhil Kamath 25:59 Mm

Umang Bedi 26:00 ... the way I look at technology is, it's very simple, right? Moore's Law. If you look at the rate of compute and the cost, it's-

Nikhil Kamath 26:07 Gets cheaper every decade.

Umang Bedi 26:07 It gets cheaper every decade, right?

Speaker 26:09 Mm.

Umang Bedi 26:09 And exponentially.

Nikhil Kamath 26:10 Yes.

Speaker 26:11 Yeah.

Umang Bedi 26:11 Now, today the problem is, if I told you, "Hey, uh, for charity, let's just run a short video platform." [chuckles] Okay, it's prohibitively expensive because all your money is going to your cloud providers, right?

Nikhil Kamath 26:23 Yeah.

Umang Bedi 26:23 It's just really expensive.

Speaker 26:24 Call it Mosh.

Umang Bedi 26:25 We call it Mosh. [laughing]

Nikhil Kamath 26:27 [laughing]

Umang Bedi 26:27 [laughing] Uh, that's a good one. We'll, we'll pick that up in a little bit.

Speaker 26:32 Yeah. Yeah.

Nikhil Kamath 26:33 Yeah.

Umang Bedi 26:33 [chuckles] But imagine that I told you that, "Hey, can we have the ability of just extending what Apu said, bringing in everything that is provided on the Oculus or through a three-dimensional experience on a simple phone?"

Nikhil Kamath 26:48 Mm.

Umang Bedi 26:48 And then what that would do is it would totally democratize it. So, uh, I'm a fan of democratization of technology, right? What makes TikTok or Facebook or, in our context, in my world, you know, Koo or Josh or Dailyhunt viral is when... Or YouTube, right? Is when everyone can access it on any device, on any surface. But for that to happen in a three-dimensional, you know, feel of an experience, the amount-

Speaker 27:15 Yeah, we just, we just have to let Moore's Law do its thing, right?

Umang Bedi 27:17 Exactly.

Speaker 27:18 We just have to wait for the next year.

Umang Bedi 27:18 The amount of compute in the back end, right, is gonna be crazy.

Speaker 27:21 Yeah.

Nikhil Kamath 27:21 Already, the new Oculus is already better than, than the last one.

Umang Bedi 27:25 The last one.

Speaker 27:25 There are versions of the Oculus.

Umang Bedi 27:26 Yeah.

Speaker 27:26 I tried something called nReal, which is a simpler version. It's a, it's a much smaller thing, and you can actually put it on top of your glasses. They're almost clip-ons.

Umang Bedi 27:36 Oh!

Speaker 27:37 And [clears throat] they don't have, uh, the depth of Oculus, like it doesn't cover your whole face. It's, it's just, it's just way smaller. So you can already see that, like it-

Umang Bedi 27:46 Things are progressing

Speaker 27:46 ... things are, things are progressing.

Umang Bedi 27:48 Yeah.

Speaker 27:48 Like, makes me almost feel like Google Glass was too early.

Umang Bedi 27:51 Way

Umang Bedi 27:52 ahead, yeah.

Speaker 27:52 Too early.

Nikhil Kamath 27:53 We- That's an interesting segue. We should probably move on to: where do we think the metaverse will first be useful, and who will adopt it first? Perfect. Hi, so we're four guys from India. Uh, we're wondering [chuckles] what the metaverse is. And, uh, start from the beginning. Maybe you can tell us what the metaverse is, and we'll lead with questions. Also, if you, if you could, could you please introduce yourself-

Speaker 28:18 Yes

Nikhil Kamath 28:18 ... for, like, a minute?

Speaker 28:20 Oh, absolutely. So, Marco Stagliano. I'm founder and, uh, CEO of Anotherone. Anotherone is a Web3 fashion phygital platform that offer access for phygital, phygital product in the fashion industry for user in order to cre- create, exchange, and also redeem the physical assets, uh, that are linked to the, to the digital, uh, to the digital assets, and unlocking opportunity for monetization, but also experience and, uh, and, and im- immersive experience in the metaverse for brands and creators. And, uh, we, we work with different metaverse, we work with different brands. We enhance the... in the fashion industry in terms of, like, um, cons- consu- uh, waste. Uh, we, we try not to create inventory and, uh, and waste for, for the production line. And also, we create, uh, an environment where the user themself, they don't... They're not clients, they become members, so they can be rewarded, that they can have monetization opportunities. So let's say, um, an ecosystem that have, uh, in mind all the stakeholders in the fashion industry, and this is Anotherone. [chuckles]

Nikhil Kamath 29:33 So we were having a conversation first about actually defining what the metaverse is, and, uh, we were wondering, or we were debating, how immersive does something have to be to be called metaverse? Would you define metaverse as something that is, uh, uh, that you can interact with through a medium like VR or AR?

Speaker 29:56 Uh, no. Actually, not. My concept of metaverse is something that already existed in different form and shape. The technology allow us to conf- to have a config... a different configuration of the metaverse. But for me, metaverse is, uh, an ecosystem that could be, uh, physical or digital, that create a complex aggregate of rules, connection, and interlink with the people it needs. Uh, that, that is not specifically related to a location or an area, as, like, the ecosystem as we know as government. Uh, if you, if you, if I, if I may do an example, um-... I'm, I'm old enough likely to have played board game. So back in the days, there was, uh, Dungeons and Dragons. So if you think about Dungeons and Dragons, that is, that is a metaverse. The only, the only difference is that you don't have VR, you don't have, uh, metaverse, you don't have digital experience, you just have your imagination as the sense to perceive the, the ecosystem and the world that was created for, for that, uh, reason. So I do believe that, uh, metaverse evo- was existing already, uh, but now we have the tools to explore more immersive experience.

Speaker 31:08 I'll just add to, uh, what Marco said. Uh, and before I pose the question, I can introduce myself. Uh, so it also depends on the use case. Uh, you know, in addition to, uh, you know, how Marco has defined it, has been existing since a long time. Uh, gaming has been, uh, you know, defining and driving it. In very simple sense, right? It's a network of interconnected 3D spaces, and, uh, uh, if you look at the evolution of the internet, it's, uh, it's been a medium where, uh, some of our five senses have been digitized in some sense, right? Uh, it started off with digitizing the sense of, uh, hearing, the sense of so- uh, sight. Uh, and, uh, the metaverse is just taking them, putting them in an immersive experience, and now with haptics, we are digitizing the sense of touch. Uh, the only thing I think we can't, uh, really digitize in the metaverse is the sense of smell and sense of taste. Uh, but, uh-

Speaker 32:04 Give it time.

Speaker 32:05 Yeah. As long as you can, uh, you know, transfer all of your human senses into a virtual world, that is a metaverse, and it depends on the use case.

Speaker 32:13 That's it.

Speaker 32:14 Uh, use cases like gaming, you don't have to be fully immersed. Your imagination can take you there. Uh, use cases like, uh, uh, virtual tourism or shopping, you need to be fully immersed. Uh, you need to go around with your family, get a sense of, uh, you know, social feedback when you're purchasing a product, and-

Speaker 32:32 Yeah

Speaker 32:32 ... uh, do that thing, right? So-

Nikhil Kamath 32:35 What do you think the first killer, killer app is gonna be [clears throat] that gets 100 million people to use it?

Speaker 32:43 Um, interesting. I think, [chuckles] ...

Nikhil Kamath 32:48 You can say [beep] [laughing]

Speaker 32:51 [laughing] It's not going to be a binary event where, uh, you know, the first app is going to, uh, crack 100 million. It, it's going to be a slow grind. There will be multiple apps driving 1 million to 5 million kind of, uh, MAU basis.

Nikhil Kamath 33:05 What's the most popular one right now?

Speaker 33:08 Uh, VR Chat.

Nikhil Kamath 33:09 VR Chat?

Speaker 33:11 Yeah.

Nikhil Kamath 33:11 Is it like, is it like Roulette chat, or it's, it's just two people talking to each other in VR?

Speaker 33:16 Uh, it's like Yahoo! Chat Rooms-

Speaker 33:18 Mm-hmm

Speaker 33:18 ... but in virtual reality.

Speaker 33:20 Got it. Yeah, communication.

Nikhil Kamath 33:23 Ah, so you can enter chat rooms?

Speaker 33:25 Yep, yep. And, uh, some people have created chat rooms where you can do things like play, uh, play a game of billiards, or some people have put in a shooting range. Uh, they have introduced some int- interesting creative tools where you can paint together, uh, or do stuff like that. But there are inherent technology problems. Uh, any room cannot support more than, uh, 30 to 40 concurrent users, uh, stably, otherwise the room starts collapsing. There's too many, uh, network complications that, uh, start popping up. So, uh, that's why game engines become very important, right? Uh, companies that have built game engines and own IP across game engines really have a huge advantage, uh, in building and defining the metaverse. So, uh, what's going to be really, uh, the app that will, uh, uh, drive critical mass in the metaverse? It's going to be sports, uh, or any kind of content that drives mass engagement, right? Sports has this very tribalistic feeling, where millions of people watch it together, and if, uh, million people watch it together in a stadium, and whichever company solves that problem first, uh, either in segments or intelligently, uh, through simulating that experience. Uh, imagine watching the IPL or, uh, the FIFA World Cup, uh, in the metaverse from your home.

Nikhil Kamath 34:48 Who, who do you think is the leader in this space? Which company? Who do you think will make money off the metaverse first?

Speaker 34:56 Too early to bet on leaders? Uh, bet on people. John Carmack is a guy, uh, who's considered, uh, by-

Nikhil Kamath 35:03 See, we can't, we can't really bet on people. At least we can buy stocks. [chuckles]

Speaker 35:08 So, uh, [chuckles] okay.

Nikhil Kamath 35:09 Sorry, I'm stupid. Who is, who is John Carmack?

Speaker 35:13 Um, okay, so Jo- John Carmack is a legend for all of us gamers. Anyone, uh, who's, uh, been into gaming in the last two decades have idolized him. He's a game designer, software engineer, who-

Nikhil Kamath 35:24 What has he designed?

Speaker 35:25 He built the first game engine in the world. He redefined immersion.

Nikhil Kamath 35:29 Okay.

Speaker 35:29 Until then, games were basically your console games that you've seen: Contra-

Nikhil Kamath 35:33 Yeah

Speaker 35:34 ... Mario-

Speaker 35:34 Mm

Speaker 35:35 ... console-based games. And, uh, suddenly this guy churns out a game engine, and you see Doom 3, where you are traveling in a 3D space [chuckles] and interacting, shooting, killing people, and-

Speaker 35:44 Got it. Ah

Speaker 35:45 ... the full immersive experience. Uh, and, uh, John went on to create, uh, a few iterations, uh, and from... That, that spawned off a lot of spin-offs. Uh, Unreal Engine, uh, what it is today is, uh, basically-

Nikhil Kamath 35:58 Oh, he's the founder of Unreal?

Speaker 35:59 Yeah.

Speaker 36:00 No, no, no. Uh, John Carmack, uh, created the first game engine, from which the Unreal Engine spun off.

Speaker 36:06 Okay.

Speaker 36:07 And, uh, the whole gaming ecosystem basically spun off from, uh, what he built.

Nikhil Kamath 36:12 Would you say amongst large companies, it's, it's between Microsoft and Meta?

Speaker 36:17 Uh, no, Unreal is, uh, an independent company.

Speaker 36:19 Mm-hmm.

Speaker 36:19 Uh, uh-

Nikhil Kamath 36:20 Have you... You don't know anything about Unreal? Oh, bro, Unreal is... Uh, how, how-

Speaker 36:25 Unreal

Nikhil Kamath 36:25 ... how much longer before, uh, Meta buys Unreal?

Speaker 36:29 Uh, they won't sell it.

Nikhil Kamath 36:31 Fair enough.

36:31 Yeah. Tell us, tell us, tell us a bit more about Unreal. No, I don't know.

Speaker 36:34 Hmm.

Speaker 36:36 ... So it's the most popular game engine in the world. They pa-

Aprameya Radhakrishna 36:41 Maybe I'll share screen and show you what, uh, Unreal can do.

Speaker 36:46 Bro?

Aprameya Radhakrishna 36:47 Yeah.

Speaker 36:47 They release a new-

Speaker 36:48 Which game, which game?

Speaker 36:48 They release everything.

Speaker 36:49 Uh.

Speaker 36:50 So Unreal Engine is like, it's the engine on which games are built on top of.

Aprameya Radhakrishna 36:54 Right.

Speaker 36:54 Mm.

Speaker 36:55 And they've built all these amazing tools, okay? So they just released something a couple of months ago, which enables anyone can come in, and you can create a game on this.

Aprameya Radhakrishna 37:04 Yeah.

Speaker 37:04 And the text-

Aprameya Radhakrishna 37:04 It's like drag and drop, and...

Speaker 37:06 Drag and drop. And the textures are insanely realistic.

Aprameya Radhakrishna 37:09 Yeah.

Speaker 37:09 Mm.

Speaker 37:10 Uh, it-

Aprameya Radhakrishna 37:10 So many new things.

Speaker 37:10 What is the new engine called? It's called something, right? The tool where everyone can build.

Aprameya Radhakrishna 37:15 Uh, it's Unreal Engine 5.1.

Speaker 37:17 Uh, Unreal Engine-

Aprameya Radhakrishna 37:18 Five, right. Yeah.

Speaker 37:20 Five.

Aprameya Radhakrishna 37:20 Five.

Speaker 37:20 Yeah.

Aprameya Radhakrishna 37:21 So it, it, it seems like Metaverse is also taking the path of the internet, right? Like-

Speaker 37:26 Yes

Aprameya Radhakrishna 37:26 ... chat rooms, then gaming-

Speaker 37:28 Correct

Aprameya Radhakrishna 37:29 ... then, so, uh, okay, I'll show you-

37:32 Do you guys see my screen?

Speaker 37:33 Yeah. Can I try...

Aprameya Radhakrishna 37:37 By the way, what are you seeing? So this, this is just a feature on Unreal Engine. This is called MetaHumans, and, uh, uh, basically, none of these human beings are real. They are avatars generated by, uh, blending and blending a combination of, uh, virtual assets.

Speaker 37:52 Wow! This is the best virtual asset you've ever seen, right?

Aprameya Radhakrishna 37:54 Yeah.

Speaker 37:54 Like, I've never seen something be this good.

Aprameya Radhakrishna 37:57 It's amazing.

Speaker 37:58 Uh, I need to get you into gaming.

Speaker 37:59 Yeah.

Speaker 38:00 You've got to play some of these games. They're too good.

Aprameya Radhakrishna 38:02 So one controversial question here: why it is Neverland or I forget the destination, the pop- the first metaverse destination where you could host-

Speaker 38:11 Horizon World

Aprameya Radhakrishna 38:12 ... uh, Horizon World or Neverland, I forget what it's called, uh, but it has twenty-six DAU or daily active users, which is insane, right? And it's valued at a billion dollars. And, uh, why would this fail? Like, why is-

Speaker 38:26 Decentraland.

Aprameya Radhakrishna 38:27 Centraland, sorry.

Speaker 38:27 Sorry.

Speaker 38:28 Decentraland.

Aprameya Radhakrishna 38:29 Decentraland.

Speaker 38:29 Yes.

Speaker 38:29 Two hundred and ninety-one-

Speaker 38:30 Eight million-

Aprameya Radhakrishna 38:30 I haven't-

Speaker 38:30 -active user as October 2022

Speaker 38:33 It's awful.

Aprameya Radhakrishna 38:33 It's awful. [chuckles]

Speaker 38:35 Yeah. So there's, there's all kinds of companies which are like... There are the, you know, the crypto companies, so to say. They tokenize first, and then building the game, and there's a promise.

Aprameya Radhakrishna 38:45 Yeah.

Speaker 38:45 Mm.

Speaker 38:45 A lot of these NFT projects, which are-

Aprameya Radhakrishna 38:47 NFTs are, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 38:48 Yeah. No, N- N- NFTs have a real use case. We can, we can get to that, that's a different thing.

Aprameya Radhakrishna 38:53 Yeah.

Speaker 38:53 Um, but the question I always had is: How the hell are they going to compete with Facebook, Meta and Microsoft?

Speaker 38:59 Mm.

Speaker 38:59 How, how can you compete? How can a ten-person engineering team compete that? Um-

Speaker 39:05 I, I do, I do have a, I do have a question, though. Uh, do you intend a metaverse, like any technology, uh, virtual simulation, or a metaverse is based on, like, all the environment being traced on blockchain? Because this is the fundamental difference between-

Aprameya Radhakrishna 39:23 Yeah

Speaker 39:23 ... like metaverse and virtual experience. Because, uh, it, uh, with our company, we, we build experience in Decentraland, we build experience in Sandbox. Now, we build... We, we bought a building in, uh, Altaverse. That is another, uh, let's say, kind of metaverse, but I call it simulation, that use Unreal Engine 5. Very good graphic, because Decentraland and Sandbox, of course, is not that compelling. But the problem is that it's not a real, like, metaverse as the concept of Sa- Sandbox and Decentraland. Because in Sandbox and Decentraland, all the lands are NFTs, and all the, all, all the, all the, um, uh, all the building are NFTs. All the structures that are, that are there are built, uh, on, on, on a traceable way. Uh, and then the, the goal of the metaverse, and that's why Decentraland, and Sandbox, and all other metaverse, like, uh, regular metaverse, let's, let's call them, have a different, uh, have a lower graphic. Because the, the, um, uh, the way to process all this image and trace, uh, and trace all these, these transaction in the, in the blockchain, uh, as of now, it's impossible because the, the, the technology is not that sophisticated. So that's, that's I think the, the first distinction between- Now, what is buying land?

Aprameya Radhakrishna 40:37 I do metaverse and-

Speaker 40:38 Land?

Aprameya Radhakrishna 40:38 Sorry.

Speaker 40:39 What do people do after buying this land? Like, on the metaverse, you said you bought a building or a land. Like, what happens next?

Speaker 40:47 You wait.

Aprameya Radhakrishna 40:47 Okay.

Speaker 40:49 So, eh, exactly. No, for, for us, it's, uh, it's more a showcase because we have this building, and then, the, the, the, this metaverse is more like a gamification experience. So we, we bought this building, and then we, we're gonna have fashion show in real life, and then we're gonna replicate the fashion show in the building. Or if we have an installation-

Speaker 41:10 That's a phig- phygital, phygital asset.

Aprameya Radhakrishna 41:12 Yeah.

Speaker 41:13 Have... Has anyone here played the Grand Theft Auto V? And now VI is going to come out at some point. Have you guys played?

Speaker 41:17 III or IV?

Aprameya Radhakrishna 41:18 Yeah.

Speaker 41:19 You got to play V, and V has a multiplayer mode.

Speaker 41:22 Are you talking about the one on your phone or on an actual system?

Speaker 41:24 No, on, on an actual system.

Speaker 41:26 Uh.

Speaker 41:26 Okay. Uh, so V has a multiplayer mode-

Speaker 41:29 Mm

Speaker 41:30 ... where anyone can create a server, and over a thousand people can come in on the server.

Aprameya Radhakrishna 41:33 Mm.

Speaker 41:33 And when you enter the server, you can choose what your occupation is gonna be. Once you get in on the server, you can choose a job, or you can start a business.

Aprameya Radhakrishna 41:42 [chuckles]

Speaker 41:42 And you can actually do the business. And you have a bank account, and there's a number-

Aprameya Radhakrishna 41:45 Mm

Speaker 41:46 ... that goes up on it. It's kind of like-

Speaker 41:47 Are you saying real bank account?

Speaker 41:48 Real bank account, and real people who are in the city. Not a real bank account, but real people in the, in the city.

Aprameya Radhakrishna 41:54 And these are other users who are-

Speaker 41:55 These are other users

Aprameya Radhakrishna 41:56 ... other users.

Speaker 41:56 So do you think at some point that bank account will become a real bank account? Because people-

Speaker 41:59 It's possible. It's po-- I mean, it's possible that, you know, they might tokenize it, or each dollar in the game is worth something-

Aprameya Radhakrishna 42:05 Mm

Speaker 42:05 ... in the real world. It's like, it's like Second Life.

Speaker 42:08 Mm.

Speaker 42:08 That was also a game.

Aprameya Radhakrishna 42:09 Yeah.

Speaker 42:09 But this is... It's really advanced.

Speaker 42:11 Mm.

Speaker 42:11 And people actually role-play. So the multiplayer version of GTA is called GTA Roleplay.

Speaker 42:17 Mm.

Speaker 42:17 It's where you actually role-play.

Aprameya Radhakrishna 42:18 Mm.

Speaker 42:19 And the rules of the server are: that if you break, if you stop role-playing, you get booted out. So people come in, they choose a character, they talk in an accent-

Aprameya Radhakrishna 42:27 Mm

Speaker 42:27 ... they'll go to a store, and people stream this online all the time. This is the closest thing to the metaverse that already exists that I've seen.

Aprameya Radhakrishna 42:34 Mm.

Speaker 42:34 Like, there are people who stream this for ten hours a day, and literally, this guy, he'll, he'll choose an accent, and all he'll do is, "Today, I gotta buy flowers for my wife." And there's another person in-... somewhere in Aurangabad, who's, who in the game have married each other-

Umang Bedi 42:48 Yeah. [chuckles]

Speaker 42:48 -and they're continuing the, they're continuing the story. This behavior already exists. Um, sorry, just want to take a break to appreciate GTA V.

Aprameya Radhakrishna 42:55 [chuckles]

Nikhil Kamath 42:56 Since you both have experience in social media, uh, how do you guys think social media will adopt the Metaverse?

Aprameya Radhakrishna 43:05 So I think a couple of things. I think first, social media has to unreal what it... Has to unlearn what it knows, which is, social media is all about control for the platform, right?

Speaker 43:14 Oh, yeah.

Aprameya Radhakrishna 43:15 Uh, it's all about, I mean, making money on-

Speaker 43:19 Metaverse will be about the control by two platforms.

Aprameya Radhakrishna 43:21 Yeah. [laughing]

Umang Bedi 43:23 [laughing] Well, let's hope not. [chuckles] Unless, unless Microsoft wins that race, and then it's a very different world, because they're always going to be a-

Aprameya Radhakrishna 43:32 Platform

Umang Bedi 43:33 ... you know, a platform, a tech provider, versus owning, uh, an end-user experience, right? I mean, they, they've stayed away from it-

Aprameya Radhakrishna 43:40 Mm

Umang Bedi 43:40 ... uh, till date, quite consciously.

Aprameya Radhakrishna 43:42 Mm.

Umang Bedi 43:43 Um, so if you think about it, uh-

Speaker 43:45 In Satya we trust. [chuckles]

Umang Bedi 43:46 In Satya we trust. Totally.

Speaker 43:48 Yeah.

Umang Bedi 43:49 So I think they'll have to unlearn a lot-

Speaker 43:51 Yeah

Umang Bedi 43:51 ... because in the social world, you own the consumer, you own his data, you monetize-

Aprameya Radhakrishna 43:56 Mm

Umang Bedi 43:56 ... his or her data. Uh, and in the Metaverse, you really don't own the consumer, right?

Aprameya Radhakrishna 44:01 Mm.

Umang Bedi 44:01 It's, it's on blockchain. Unless sure, you, you-

Speaker 44:04 No, no, Metaverse is not necessarily on the blockchain.

Umang Bedi 44:06 Yeah.

Aprameya Radhakrishna 44:07 Yeah.

Speaker 44:07 It can, it can very much be on AWS servers. [chuckles]

Umang Bedi 44:09 [chuckles]

Nikhil Kamath 44:10 Like the game I was playing-

Umang Bedi 44:11 Yeah

Nikhil Kamath 44:11 ... last night, Echo-

Umang Bedi 44:12 Yeah

Nikhil Kamath 44:13 ... on Oculus, on Meta's platform. It's owned by them, right?

Speaker 44:16 Normally, yeah.

Umang Bedi 44:16 Mm-hmm.

Aprameya Radhakrishna 44:17 It's on Meta.

Nikhil Kamath 44:17 Everything is theirs.

Aprameya Radhakrishna 44:18 So everything is theirs.

Speaker 44:18 Yeah, it's true. Yeah.

Aprameya Radhakrishna 44:19 So, so what, what I think, uh, will happen is the- as in there'll be multiple people trying out different use cases of the Metaverse.

Umang Bedi 44:27 Yeah.

Aprameya Radhakrishna 44:27 Right? One person will do communication, another will do gaming, third one will do, you know, just fashion.

Nikhil Kamath 44:35 Mm.

Aprameya Radhakrishna 44:35 Uh, so all of this, and somebody else will say, "I'll just create the world."

Umang Bedi 44:39 Yeah.

Aprameya Radhakrishna 44:40 Like, you know, I can attend a concert or whatever-

Nikhil Kamath 44:43 Yeah

Aprameya Radhakrishna 44:43 ... right? The, the guy who cracks the highest frequency use case-

Nikhil Kamath 44:50 Mm

Aprameya Radhakrishna 44:50 ... in the Metaverse, gets the opportunity to own all the low-frequency use cases after that.

Nikhil Kamath 44:56 What do we think? If we all had to venture a guess, what do we suspect the first use case will be?

Speaker 45:03 Um, I think that it makes sense that VR chat is insanely popular.

Aprameya Radhakrishna 45:09 Communication, yeah.

Umang Bedi 45:10 Yeah.

Speaker 45:10 Because basic communication-

Nikhil Kamath 45:11 Do we-

Speaker 45:11 And the randomness-

Nikhil Kamath 45:12 How,

Nikhil Kamath 45:13 how original do we look? Not original, but how... Like, I'm shaking my hand and expressing myself in a certain manner.

Speaker 45:19 Yeah.

Nikhil Kamath 45:19 How much does that pass on into the Metaverse?

Speaker 45:22 Uh, Prashant will be able to answer that.

Speaker 45:25 Guys, uh, you guys need to check out Haptics. Um, the latest CES show had, uh, some really cool Metaverse hardware, like, a Tesla suit, for example. Tesla suit is like a jacket and a pant that you wear on, and, uh, it transmits your full body feedback onto the Metaverse. So if I give you a hug sitting in New York, you feel it-

Speaker 45:47 We're there, we're there. We're already there. [chuckles]

Speaker 45:49 Have you guys seen this movie, uh, Ready Player One?

Nikhil Kamath 45:51 Yes.

Umang Bedi 45:52 Yeah.

Speaker 45:52 Right. So in the movie, uh, this guy orders a, uh, I think the X1 suit or something, before he goes on a date with his girlfriend.

Speaker 46:00 Right.

Speaker 46:00 And jacks in here, you're wearing a suit with, uh, you know, all full body sensors, and they go on a date dancing around. So we're almost there. Uh, I think 5G is one thing, and, uh, then, uh, I'm betting big on Apple, uh, to change things-

Umang Bedi 46:15 Yes

Speaker 46:16 ... on the AR and...

Umang Bedi 46:17 Yeah.

Nikhil Kamath 46:17 Prashant and Marco-

Speaker 46:18 Yeah

Nikhil Kamath 46:18 ... we're going to put you on the spot a little bit.

Speaker 46:21 Sure.

Nikhil Kamath 46:21 Name one company you would bet on, which is publicly listed and people can invest in, [chuckles] to take advantage of the Metaverse. And you can name one, publicly listed company.

Speaker 46:31 Okay. So on the consumer side, there is no Metaverse company which has any substantial lead. Uh, there are infrastructure players, and these can be identified by engineering heads, uh, you know, owning or building different components. But on the enterprise side, it's no doubt Microsoft.

Nikhil Kamath 46:48 Microsoft more than Meta?

Aprameya Radhakrishna 46:50 By miles.

Nikhil Kamath 46:52 Microsoft better than Meta?

Speaker 46:54 Yeah, Meta is screwed. John Carmack resigned last week. Uh, until John Carmack was there, I was, uh, you know, having some hope for Meta, but after he resigned, there's no hope. There's no tangible, uh, VR tech guy, uh, or Metaverse tech guy within Meta's leadership right now.

Umang Bedi 47:11 Yeah.

Speaker 47:11 He's going to sell his stock right now. [laughing]

Aprameya Radhakrishna 47:13 You have stock? [laughing]

Speaker 47:15 Yeah.

Aprameya Radhakrishna 47:15 Sell. [laughing] Sell. I sold mine. [chuckles]

Speaker 47:20 Okay. How do you feel about Nvidia?

Speaker 47:23 So yeah, that's the infrastructure player I'm talking about. So you have people like that, Nvidia and, uh, maybe IQI from China, or anyone who's manufacturing hardware, uh, those guys are going to do fine always.

Umang Bedi 47:36 Nvidia, like, for both-

Aprameya Radhakrishna 47:38 Meta

Umang Bedi 47:38 ... Metaverse and crypto.

Speaker 47:40 Mm.

Umang Bedi 47:40 'Cause Nvidia is basically everyone's buying Nvidia-

Nikhil Kamath 47:42 Another one plugging in crypto here. [laughing]

Speaker 47:44 Nobody... [laughing] This is the worst time to talk about crypto.

Aprameya Radhakrishna 47:47 I know, it's a bad word. [chuckles]

Umang Bedi 47:49 Yeah.

Speaker 47:49 Uh, but Nvidia, also people use it to mine.

Speaker 47:52 No one has any, has any lead. Uh, I don't think, uh, there will be any lead until at least one or two years after Apple launches their, uh, VR devices.

Aprameya Radhakrishna 48:01 A- another reason why I think Meta won't do well in the Metaverse is because everything that they've done well after Facebook is something they bought.

Umang Bedi 48:10 Yeah, they've acquired.

Aprameya Radhakrishna 48:11 Everything they've tried to do on their own, I don't think they've done well at all. So their strategy is to keep an eye out on which is the next company that will do well on Metaverse, and then buy it.

Umang Bedi 48:22 The other controversial view is that any web, the 1.0 company-

Aprameya Radhakrishna 48:26 Uh

Umang Bedi 48:27 ... was terrible to- has never built a great Web 2.0 product or even a company, right? And I don't see, uh, any current Web 2.0.

Speaker 48:34 I mean, that's between 2010 and 2022-

Umang Bedi 48:37 Yeah

Speaker 48:37 ... we've not seen any substantial innovation. It's because big times create big men, right? Uh, s- sorry, good times create big men.

Umang Bedi 48:44 Right.

Speaker 48:44 And it's been great times for the last 15 years.

Aprameya Radhakrishna 48:46 Mm.

Umang Bedi 48:47 Yeah.

Speaker 48:48 Um, so no real innovation has actually happened.

Nikhil Kamath 48:51 ... Also, guys, uh, we all are disclosing that we may or may not have shares in any of the companies [laughing]

Aprameya Radhakrishna 48:58 [laughing] No, no, mine is totally organic. It's all names that are popping up in my head, like [laughing]

Nikhil Kamath 49:03 Yeah. But we may have, we might-

Aprameya Radhakrishna 49:04 I have no Meta shares left. [chuckles]

Tanmay Bhat 49:06 But remember, there's only one man who professionally trades- [laughing]

Nikhil Kamath 49:10 [laughing]

Tanmay Bhat 49:10 -at this table.

Nikhil Kamath 49:11 It's always important to have disclosures. [laughing]

Speaker 49:14 If I, if I may give my opinion on Meta, why it won't succeed in, in the Metaverse, is, is because, of course, what you say, it's... They- they're stuck in 2010, and now it's 2012. But they don't understand the concept of the Metaverse. The Metaverse is like also democracy.

Aprameya Radhakrishna 49:30 Yeah.

Speaker 49:30 It's like democratization of, uh, of the creation phase, of the, of the usage. If you go to Sandbox and you create your, your own collection, you get 85% of the roy- of the, of the sales.

Aprameya Radhakrishna 49:43 Yeah.

Speaker 49:43 Sandbox will just take a fee. In Meta, in Meta, they will take 85%, and the creator will take 15%. It's the- that's, that's the problem.

Aprameya Radhakrishna 49:52 Yeah.

Speaker 49:52 And the second thing is like, why do I need to have my virtual avatar that looks like me if I have to play around with my imagination in a Metaverse? I mean, I can-

Aprameya Radhakrishna 50:02 Well-

Speaker 50:02 Yes, I can have my, my replica, but, uh, it's just, like, a little bit lame. Sorry for the word. [laughing]

Aprameya Radhakrishna 50:11 Yeah. No, but-

Nikhil Kamath 50:12 Someone was telling me, talking to me about the concept of buying watches. Why does somebody buy a Rolex?

Speaker 50:18 Mm.

Nikhil Kamath 50:18 And if somebody buys-

Speaker 50:20 Exactly

Nikhil Kamath 50:20 ... a Rolex in, in the real world-

Aprameya Radhakrishna 50:22 Mm

Nikhil Kamath 50:22 ... why not spend on an-

Speaker 50:24 Of course

Nikhil Kamath 50:25 ... NFT in the virtual world?

Speaker 50:26 Of course.

Aprameya Radhakrishna 50:27 Mm.

Nikhil Kamath 50:27 I'm not able to digest that logic yet.

Tanmay Bhat 50:30 No, no-

Aprameya Radhakrishna 50:30 Well, let's do-

Tanmay Bhat 50:31 I mean, this behavior already exists.

Nikhil Kamath 50:32 Mm.

Tanmay Bhat 50:32 There's the most expensive CS:GO skin. CS:GO is a very popular game. The most expensive skin-

Nikhil Kamath 50:38 CS is Counter-Strike?

Tanmay Bhat 50:39 Counter-Strike. So anyone-

Nikhil Kamath 50:40 Can I tell you something?

Tanmay Bhat 50:41 Ah.

Nikhil Kamath 50:42 For the la- not in the last five years, but for a good 10 years in a row, me, N- Nitin, four, five other guys, we have s- we have played Counter-Strike every day in office on the network for a minimum of three, four hours each.

Tanmay Bhat 50:58 You never bought a skin?

Nikhil Kamath 50:59 No. Back then it was Counter-

Aprameya Radhakrishna 51:01 Mm

Nikhil Kamath 51:01 ... Counter-Strike 1.6.

Tanmay Bhat 51:03 Yeah. Yeah, so the most expensive skin currently is going for some $800,000, which is-

Aprameya Radhakrishna 51:07 Whoa

Tanmay Bhat 51:08 ... nothing but a spray on a gun, and there is a marketplace for this that, that keeps the royalty of, of this. So this behavior 100% exists, right?

Aprameya Radhakrishna 51:17 Yeah.

Tanmay Bhat 51:17 Like, uh, buying something for a world where you can signal in a world that you spend a lot of time in.

Aprameya Radhakrishna 51:24 Yeah.

Nikhil Kamath 51:24 Mm.

Tanmay Bhat 51:25 Um, I mean, people are gonna buy the blue check now, so...

Aprameya Radhakrishna 51:28 Yeah, so the, the thing is-

Tanmay Bhat 51:30 Yeah

Aprameya Radhakrishna 51:30 ... it's, it's about are there enough people that I can show off to in that world?

Tanmay Bhat 51:34 Yeah.

Speaker 51:34 Yeah.

Nikhil Kamath 51:34 Right. But how far would you go? Would you buy a house in the-

Aprameya Radhakrishna 51:37 If I'm gonna live there 18 hours a day and sleep-

Speaker 51:41 Yeah, then it's-

Aprameya Radhakrishna 51:41 ... in the real world-

Speaker 51:42 It's an obsession

Aprameya Radhakrishna 51:43 ... then I'm gonna stop spending in the real world and only spend there.

Speaker 51:45 There.

Tanmay Bhat 51:46 Of course, of course. It's no brainer. I've spent 25,000 bucks on a game called Valorant that I play every day for an hour.

Nikhil Kamath 51:52 Yeah.

Tanmay Bhat 51:52 So this is real, and people will, people will do it.

Aprameya Radhakrishna 51:55 Mm.

Tanmay Bhat 51:55 People pay millions of dollars just for a profile picture of, of an NFT, right?

Aprameya Radhakrishna 51:58 Mm.

Nikhil Kamath 51:58 Another question. I, I got a Oculus, and I was playing Echo last night, and I woke up today-

Aprameya Radhakrishna 52:04 Mm

Nikhil Kamath 52:04 ... and I had, like, this massive pain in my neck and everything. How does that change? Because when you're in a device and you're not doing things which are natural to you for more than a few hours, how does the body cope with it?

Tanmay Bhat 52:19 Prashant, this is for you. [chuckles] It's your domain.

Speaker 52:22 [chuckles] All right. Um, so it's mostly the first part is the hardware form factor. Uh, people have not solved the fine balance that, uh, uh, you need to take care of in a decent VR device. So there's a lot of weight in the front of your head, but there needs to be a counterweight to balance on the back, and-

Nikhil Kamath 52:41 Yeah, you end up like this.

Tanmay Bhat 52:43 Yeah.

Nikhil Kamath 52:43 And you don't realize you're like this for two hours in a row, and then you-

Aprameya Radhakrishna 52:46 Mm.

Speaker 52:46 Yeah.

Nikhil Kamath 52:46 When you take it off...

Speaker 52:49 So, it- it's the first time in your life your muscles are used to, you know, carrying a two-pound weight on the forehead. Uh, so, uh, I think some of the VR devices I came across had a counterweight to balance on the back using some of that thing. Uh, and, uh, then I... Someone mentioned Nreal glasses. Glasses coming out with that kind of form factor solves it.

Tanmay Bhat 53:09 Have you tried those?

Speaker 53:11 I haven't tried them, but, uh, I've tried other MR glasses. But, but I, I understand. They're pretty cool, man.

Tanmay Bhat 53:18 Yeah, and the Nreal one, uh, ones are pretty cool.

Speaker 53:21 Yeah. Uh, okay, what really solves this is 5G, right?

Nikhil Kamath 53:25 Yeah.

Speaker 53:25 Uh, why is the headset heavy? Because the headset is carrying a display, a processor, a GPU, a networking thing, a battery pack, and this whole-

Tanmay Bhat 53:34 Once- once there's cloud, it becomes easier?

Speaker 53:36 Yeah. So once 5G is supporting consistent bandwidth of 500 Mbps and above, you're just carrying a display on your, uh, you know, lens, and everything is just streamed. The processing is always done on the cloud or maybe on your mobile phone for that reason, right? You need to separate the processor, GPU, battery from the display. When that happens, the form factor becomes better.

Aprameya Radhakrishna 53:58 So it's, it's a combination of two things. It's a combination of not only, uh, 5G, which I think is super critical, to your point, but also the cost of compute coming down exponentially in the back end, right?

Speaker 54:09 Mm.

Aprameya Radhakrishna 54:10 Um, it's really expensive otherwise. Even if you have 5G today, 5G is now a reality, right? There are a billion people on the planet who are on 5G-

Speaker 54:18 Right

Aprameya Radhakrishna 54:18 ... uh, of the six billion who are connected, or five billion who are connected. Um, but the back-end compute is so expensive with Amazon and, you know, Google and Microsoft, uh, making money on that compute. That has to come down significantly, uh, as well for it to work.

Speaker 54:34 Uh, I'll slightly differ on that topic. The back-end compute part, uh, this is where gaming companies who have a gaming engine have, uh, a massive advantage. Now, take, for example, a game of Counter-Strike, right? Um, in, in a map, De_Dust 2, you have 10 people playing around, uh, and, uh, shooting bullets, which are traveling at ridiculous speeds. And compare a 30-second or a one-minute session of this game-... to a one-minute session of a user who's on Amazon, right? The number of, [chuckles] uh, the amount of information being parsed in a one-minute session of Counter-Strike is ridiculously high compared to an Amazon session. Amazon, the guy's clicking maybe five times in a minute to add card and purchase, that's it. And it's okay if the, you know, click registers an event 100 milliseconds later, but on Counter-Strike, it has to be 10 milliseconds or 20 milliseconds. When you shoot a bullet, the guy has to die immediately.

Tanmay Bhat 55:27 So, for example, in a game, if you are here and I'm here, and I shoot, and sometime as a player, if my, if my internet is weak-

Umang Bedi 55:35 Mm.

Tanmay Bhat 55:36 -the bullet... I've obviously shot you, but you're not dead in the game.

Umang Bedi 55:39 Right.

Tanmay Bhat 55:39 It's 'cause my ping is high-

Umang Bedi 55:41 Right

Tanmay Bhat 55:41 ... which means the time it takes to show your location-

Umang Bedi 55:44 Yeah. Yeah, yeah

Tanmay Bhat 55:44 ... to me-

Speaker 55:45 Yeah

Tanmay Bhat 55:45 ... is taking way longer.

Umang Bedi 55:46 Mm. Umang Bedi: You know, I, I, I read this article where, uh, this guy has created in the metaverse, where if you die in the game, you die in real.

Tanmay Bhat 55:56 It's... That's not real. Really?

Umang Bedi 55:57 That can't be real, dude. Umang Bedi: No, so he's, he's created that experience. I'm sure nobody's going through it yet. Yeah. Umang Bedi: But he's saying, "You play this game, if you die in the game, you die in real."

Nikhil Kamath 56:06 So that's Squid Games.

Umang Bedi 56:07 It's like Squid Games. Umang Bedi: Oh, yeah, Squid Games. [laughing] It's like Squid Games.

Nikhil Kamath 56:11 Yeah. [laughing]

Umang Bedi 56:11 It's like Squid Games.

Speaker 56:11 Any of you guys watched anime? Uh, there's this anime called Sword Art Online. Uh-

Umang Bedi 56:15 Oh

Speaker 56:16 ... it, it's based in the future, and, uh, so-

Tanmay Bhat 56:18 But why have I not shocked you watch anime? Since actually.

Nikhil Kamath 56:21 Hey, no, this has been, like, enlightening. Can I tell you, you guys have taught us more about the metaverse than we could find online, by a mile. 'Cause have you seen the videos online? There was nothing.

Tanmay Bhat 56:32 Nothing.

Nikhil Kamath 56:32 There was just confusion.

Umang Bedi 56:33 Yeah.

Tanmay Bhat 56:34 Nothing great.

Umang Bedi 56:34 Yeah.

Tanmay Bhat 56:35 Anyway, thank you, guys, so much.

Umang Bedi 56:36 Thank you.

Nikhil Kamath 56:37 Thank you.

Tanmay Bhat 56:37 It was so useful. Prashant, I will be touch-

Nikhil Kamath 56:38 Thank you so much, Prashant and Marco.

Umang Bedi 56:40 Thank you.

Nikhil Kamath 56:40 Bye, guys.

Umang Bedi 56:41 Thank you.

Tanmay Bhat 56:41 Bye, Marco.

Speaker 56:42 Thank you very much.

Nikhil Kamath 56:43 Okay, guys, let's welcome Himanshu, who created India's first virtual influencer called Kyra.

Tanmay Bhat 56:50 Right.

Nikhil Kamath 56:51 Uh-

Tanmay Bhat 56:52 I have, I have a question. Why did you choose the name Kyra?

Speaker 56:55 So we didn't want to be political or religious, so we didn't give her a surname, that's why, because we wanted to get the most amount of audience possible. So that's why it's a very neutral name, it's a very trendy name. We have also recently launched a South Indian virtual influencer. Her name is Shravya. So we have a fellow from Andhra, and he says, uh, he says that Shravya is the most trending na-name right now in the South.

Tanmay Bhat 57:19 Oh.

Speaker 57:19 So it, it's not like a very calculated decision. It's, uh, it's a team of content creators coming up with these names.

Tanmay Bhat 57:26 Got it. But Kyra, Kyra sounds like a virtually-

Nikhil Kamath 57:28 [chuckles]

Tanmay Bhat 57:29 ... name, right?

Umang Bedi 57:30 Yeah, virtual name.

Tanmay Bhat 57:31 Yeah.

Umang Bedi 57:31 Yeah.

Nikhil Kamath 57:31 And why did you create a girl? Because we are five guys on this table, you know. [chuckles]

Umang Bedi 57:35 Yeah.

Speaker 57:35 So we are working on a guy as well, on a virtual influencer.

Nikhil Kamath 57:38 Why?

Umang Bedi 57:38 No, no, why-

Tanmay Bhat 57:39 Why did you create the girl? [laughing]

Umang Bedi 57:39 No, it makes sense, because if he's created an influencer in India, we're a male-dominated population on the internet, and if you want followers and viewers, they're gonna be more men following a woman.

Tanmay Bhat 57:50 Nikhil was [laughing]

Umang Bedi 57:51 Uh, puta, well, this is why I think. [laughing]

Nikhil Kamath 57:54 Is that true on social media if... I mean, I know it's true, but I wanna know how true, since you guys are on social media. If you were a cute girl who posted pictures online, what are the odds of getting more likes? I, I'm not talking about people like Tanmay, okay? I'm talking about us normal people. [laughing]

Umang Bedi 58:10 Ha! What are the odds? Um, so I've asked a bunch of my, um, friends who are, uh, you know, some of, some of these are girls who are in fashion and... So one of the things I ask is, "Can I see your audience insights on Instagram?"

Tanmay Bhat 58:25 Mm.

Umang Bedi 58:25 Just to see the, to see the breakup. Very, very rarely-

Nikhil Kamath 58:28 Mm

Umang Bedi 58:28 ... do I see an equal split. In fact, h- I think probably twice I've seen it. Um, but more often than not, uh, it is, it is male-dominated. I'm sure, like-

Tanmay Bhat 58:39 Male-dominated.

Umang Bedi 58:40 I'm sure there are numbers to, to, to prove this as well.

Speaker 58:43 Even when we started, Kyra had 90% male audience, 10% female. So we worked very hard, uh, through marketing, through, like, reaching out. We actually marketed it, marketed a lot through memes.

Tanmay Bhat 58:54 Mm.

Speaker 58:54 So all these meme pages that have 10 million followers on Instagram. Now-

Nikhil Kamath 58:58 And what is the ratio now?

Speaker 58:59 Now the ratio is 70/30. So we were surprised that a lot of females follow meme pages as well.

Nikhil Kamath 59:05 So what does Kyra do? Like, is she a character on one of the metaverses we spoke about? Is it on Facebook's metaverse, Kyra exists there?

Speaker 59:13 Right. So Kyra is a virtual influencer. There's no such person that exists, and Kyra is a virtually 3D-created character that we have created. She can go... Theoretically, she can go to any metaverse.

Nikhil Kamath 59:23 Where does she live? Like, where does she spend her time?

Speaker 59:24 So her story... So we are really focused on storytelling. Her story is that in January of 2022, she came from the metaverse to our world, and she lost her memories. So she's, she came to the digital world. Now she's on a journey to rediscover her memories, that where does she come from? So we haven't told that origin story yet, what is her original metaverse, but we have tried Kyra in different metaverses. So we have tried with Decentraland. We, uh, recently did something with MG Motors. So they have created their own, uh, MGverse, and we got Kyra into that for the auto expo.

Nikhil Kamath 1:00:00 And just out of curiosity, is it a two-way conversation? How do I talk to Kyra?

Speaker 1:00:03 Currently, Kyra is static, so it's a very, uh, curated kind of-

Umang Bedi 1:00:07 No audio? She doesn't talk.

Speaker 1:00:08 She talks, uh, we have a voice actress. There's no interactivity right now. We are work... That's the thing that we are working on. Uh, the next step will be to make her semi-autonomous.

Nikhil Kamath 1:00:17 And how does Kyra make money?

Speaker 1:00:19 So currently, we are, uh-

Umang Bedi 1:00:20 MG Motors. [laughing]

Speaker 1:00:23 We have worked with six brands, and we actually have more requests than we can... we have the production capacity for, but we don't want to be standing on-

Nikhil Kamath 1:00:30 You don't have to answer this if you don't want to, but how much does a brand like that pay someone like Kyra? I don't know how much following Kyra has.

Speaker 1:00:37 So currently, Kyra has 200K followers. Typically, like, you get 10,000, 1 lac-

Nikhil Kamath 1:00:42 On one particular social media platform?

Speaker 1:00:44 On Instagram. We are working on her music album for YouTube. So we are actually... We have hired a production team. We're quite happy with the song that they have produced. We're quite excited to launch her. So all the... So there is a very popular, uh, virtual influencer called Lil Miquela.... uh, she's in the US. She has three million followers. She's 19 years old, and she has her music albums, and her music videos get 5 million views, plus 10 million views. And almost all virtual influencers have some sort of music angle.

Nikhil Kamath 1:01:13 But tell me this: when I'm looking at Kyra online, I know it's not a re- real person. I know it's not her voice. In her album, I know it's not her singing.

Speaker 1:01:22 Right.

Nikhil Kamath 1:01:23 Uh, what is the incentive or why do people follow virtual influencers?

Speaker 1:01:29 Right. So when we-

Speaker 1:01:31 Character, it's charac- character and storytelling, right?

Speaker 1:01:33 Mm.

Speaker 1:01:33 It's like saying Harry Potter isn't real, then why are there Potterheads? It's like saying-

Nikhil Kamath 1:01:38 Mm

Speaker 1:01:38 ... Sherlock Holmes isn't real, why are we watching their movies?

Nikhil Kamath 1:01:40 Because there was a movie which popularized them.

Speaker 1:01:42 Yeah. So similarly, social media is like you're building the story out-

Nikhil Kamath 1:01:47 Mm

Speaker 1:01:47 ... right? Now, tomorrow, Kyra could meet, meet a nice guy.

Speaker 1:01:51 Right.

Speaker 1:01:51 Um, and-

Nikhil Kamath 1:01:52 So in a way, everything on social media is essentially a story.

Speaker 1:01:55 Do you think movies will go there? Uh, yeah.

Nikhil Kamath 1:01:59 Like, like we've had 3D movies and stuff, right?

Speaker 1:02:01 Yeah.

Nikhil Kamath 1:02:01 Like, you wear those glasses. Do you think-

Speaker 1:02:02 Have you, have you seen Jurassic Park on, on Oculus?

Nikhil Kamath 1:02:04 No.

Speaker 1:02:05 Uh, you should watch it. It's, it's pretty nuts.

Nikhil Kamath 1:02:07 Is it intra- interactive? Like, can you do stuff-

Speaker 1:02:09 No

Nikhil Kamath 1:02:09 ... with the character?

Speaker 1:02:10 Not yet.

Speaker 1:02:11 Yes.

Speaker 1:02:11 Not yet.

Speaker 1:02:12 Not yet.

Speaker 1:02:12 But, uh, so they, they have a two, three-minute movie of Jurassic Park inside the Oculus, where if you look around, there's a dinosaur behind you-

Speaker 1:02:19 [chuckles]

Speaker 1:02:19 ... there's one in front of you, and-

Nikhil Kamath 1:02:21 But imagine if they have haptics, and you can touch the dinosaurs.

Speaker 1:02:23 That'll be the, that'll be the next step.

Speaker 1:02:25 Yeah.

Speaker 1:02:26 Uh, yeah. Why do you want to touch dinosaurs? Anyway, [laughing] uh... [laughing] Anyway, so I-

Speaker 1:02:31 Stop this, dude.

Speaker 1:02:32 I have... [laughing] By the way, this is-

Speaker 1:02:33 Look at what all we're discovering tonight. [laughing]

Speaker 1:02:35 What a weirdo! [laughing]

Speaker 1:02:37 Yeah.

Speaker 1:02:37 Can you imagine, ""? [laughing] Weirdo.

Speaker 1:02:43 [chuckles] Umang Bedi: Have you tried integrating ChatGPT with it? Is it a very-

Nikhil Kamath 1:02:46 I was just thinking it'll make sense.

Speaker 1:02:47 I was just thinking about it when you were saying it.

Speaker 1:02:48 So we are on the hunt for a CTO. That, that's the first thing that we want to do.

Speaker 1:02:52 [laughing]

Speaker 1:02:52 We have figured out that-

Speaker 1:02:53 In Bangalore, dude. [laughing] Hey! [laughing]

Nikhil Kamath 1:02:56 Hey, also, we all are very obliged. Himanshu flew all the way from Delhi to Bangalore for tonight.

Speaker 1:03:01 Oh, wow! Yeah. Umang Bedi: I suddenly feel worse for you, dude. Yeah. Umang Bedi: My condolences are with you.

Nikhil Kamath 1:03:04 Thank you so much.

Speaker 1:03:05 Yeah.

Nikhil Kamath 1:03:05 That was very kind.

Speaker 1:03:06 Yeah, flight. Umang Bedi: Yeah. Uh, guys, if there, if any, any tech folks are watching this-

Nikhil Kamath 1:03:10 Yeah

Speaker 1:03:10 ... please do apply.

Speaker 1:03:11 Absolutely.

Speaker 1:03:11 Link should be in the description.

Nikhil Kamath 1:03:13 Yeah.

Speaker 1:03:13 Uh, but you are in the right city. Bangalore, tu pathar fekta to char city ko lag jata hai galti se. [laughing]

Speaker 1:03:18 [chuckles] My friend was just joking that every corner there's a founder and a CEO.

Speaker 1:03:21 Of course.

Nikhil Kamath 1:03:22 You should spend, uh, one or two days and meet a bunch of people.

Speaker 1:03:24 Yeah. There's-

Speaker 1:03:24 So we have a-

Speaker 1:03:25 ... there's five on this table. [laughing]

Speaker 1:03:26 So we are currently meeting VCs right now.

Nikhil Kamath 1:03:29 Okay.

Speaker 1:03:30 Uh, because we have scaled it so far. Although we-

Nikhil Kamath 1:03:33 Tanmay is...

Speaker 1:03:34 I'm not a VC. Small angel, small angel. Are you using Ep- Unreal Engine to, to... for it?

Speaker 1:03:40 We have ported Kyra to Unreal Engine. Um-

Speaker 1:03:42 Mm

Speaker 1:03:42 ... we're still figuring out the details, but we believe Unreal Engine is the way to go.

Nikhil Kamath 1:03:46 Mm.

Speaker 1:03:47 Yep.

Speaker 1:03:47 Uh, right, so there are two pipelines. One is the animation pipeline, which is, you see Pixar movies, and one is the gaming pipeline. Uh, currently, animation pipeline is more photorealistic-

Speaker 1:03:56 Mm

Speaker 1:03:56 ... but Unreal Engine is catching up.

Speaker 1:03:58 So what is the moat gonna be? Just story?

Speaker 1:04:01 We want, we want it to be story. So we cannot compete with Unreal. Like, we cannot put billions of dollars into making the next 3D company.

Speaker 1:04:09 So how are, how are real influencers actually reacting to this? Have you, have you asked them what- A real influencer is reacting right now. [laughing] No, no, the, the, the [laughing] ... I have like, "„"" [laughing] Especially the women.

Speaker 1:04:26 Mm. Right. So we did something with Boat. Uh, so they were launching their ANC neckband, and Kyra was the face of the campaign.

Speaker 1:04:33 Uh.

Speaker 1:04:33 So we most likely replaced some influencer that was-

Speaker 1:04:36 Correct

Speaker 1:04:36 ... going to be the face of the campaign with Kyra.

Speaker 1:04:38 You bastard. [laughing] How dare you?

Speaker 1:04:40 Yeah. [chuckles]

Speaker 1:04:41 It's hard enough with the recession coming. [laughing]

Nikhil Kamath 1:04:44 Basically, all jobs are going.

Speaker 1:04:46 All jobs are... Yeah.

Nikhil Kamath 1:04:46 So, yeah, tell me, tell me a few jobs which will not go away-

Speaker 1:04:51 Which will not

Nikhil Kamath 1:04:51 ... in 20 years.

Speaker 1:04:52 The guys who are creating all this.

Speaker 1:04:53 Yeah, like AI operators. [chuckles]

Speaker 1:04:56 Oh, somebody's gonna [chuckles] automate, create-

Nikhil Kamath 1:04:58 Like ChatGPT and coding and all that.

Speaker 1:04:59 Yeah. Yeah. ChatGPT, so it's mostly, like, a lot of these are as at... We're still at the asi stage, but like with most of technology, it's like it's almost there, almost there, almost there, and then one day, it's like, wink! It's like, "All right, all right, now I have your job." [chuckles]

Nikhil Kamath 1:05:12 Now, I strangely feel happier or better because of ChatGPT, 'cause I never knew coding, and I used to always feel jealous of these people who used to code.

Speaker 1:05:19 Who used to code, yeah. Yeah. Now anybody can code.

Nikhil Kamath 1:05:20 I hope it becomes more democratized.

Speaker 1:05:21 Yeah.

Nikhil Kamath 1:05:22 Like, you give it instructions, and it creates a program for you.

Speaker 1:05:25 It's actually really cool. It is. ChatGPT is, is really cool. Really cool. Um- That's the coolest thing I've seen in a while. It's too cheap, is what I think. $40 is too cheap. It'll, it'll go up. Yeah.

Nikhil Kamath 1:05:36 Really?

Speaker 1:05:36 No, there, there, there is a pro version. There is a pro version. I'm like, "It's too cheap. Everyone's writing ads so easily and all that." [laughing]

Nikhil Kamath 1:05:41 In that pro version, you get data from 2020?

Speaker 1:05:43 Write an ad like Tanmay Bhat.

Nikhil Kamath 1:05:45 It only shows me, like, whatever question I ask it, it says, "Data only are available till 2021."

Speaker 1:05:51 Uh, okay. No, but- That- But for example- ... That is true.

Nikhil Kamath 1:05:53 Yeah.

Speaker 1:05:53 The data set is still 2021, so they are making GPT-4. Currently, it's-

Nikhil Kamath 1:05:59 Even on the pro version?

Speaker 1:05:59 Even in the pro version. So all the training data, it has been given. It's still 2021.

Speaker 1:06:02 But that, that's all temporary problems.

Speaker 1:06:04 Yeah.

Speaker 1:06:04 That will-

Speaker 1:06:05 They're actually making GPT... So this is 3 or 3.5. They're making GPT-4.

Nikhil Kamath 1:06:09 But can I be honest?

Speaker 1:06:10 Mm.

Nikhil Kamath 1:06:10 Like, I tried a whole bunch of queries on GPT. Maybe I did not understand how to engineer it properly or how to ask the right questions-

Speaker 1:06:18 Mm-mm. Mm, mm, mm.

Nikhil Kamath 1:06:19 But I didn't find it incredibly more useful than Google search in what I searched.

Speaker 1:06:25 Uh, yeah. Mm. So there'll be professions, like prompt engineers are gonna be a thing. Yeah. Um, like there was some specific way for you to prompt. Like, there are already websites where, where- websites where you can buy prompts, where there are certain prompts that deliver certain kinds of images on DALL-E. So I have bought... I've spent, like, $50 buying different prompts. I was like, "Okay, I..." So for example, this guy, I wanted to make some logos, and this guy had figured out a way to make these nice, beautiful 3D, 3D-ish logos. Oh. And I said, "Okay, I want a logo in 3D." So I went and paid $9. I got the prompt, and then I'm able to use it in DALL-E, and I, and I've made, made a logo myself. So creating the prompt will become the skill? 100%. Uh. Prompt engineers are gonna be a thing. Got it, got it.

Nikhil Kamath 1:07:07 Do you think ChatGPT-

Speaker 1:07:10 ... Absolutely.

Umang Bedi 1:07:10 Yeah.

1:07:11 Yeah.

1:07:11 Oh, yeah, yeah.

Host 1:07:12 Do you think it'll power the communication in the-

Speaker 1:07:15 It, it, so not just ChatGPT, AI in general.

Umang Bedi 1:07:17 Yeah.

Speaker 1:07:17 So currently, if you have to create a 3D world, so, uh, something- there's a concept of a metaverse called a digital twin.

Umang Bedi 1:07:24 Yeah.

Speaker 1:07:24 That whatever exists in the real world, it, there will be a digital twin of it. Uh, Seoul is actually launching a virtual Seoul. South Korea is working on it.

Umang Bedi 1:07:33 Mm.

Speaker 1:07:33 There is a tool called NeRF. Uh, it's neural radiance field. So just with a smartphone, you can capture this room-

Umang Bedi 1:07:40 Yeah

Speaker 1:07:40 ... and it will create a 3D version of it.

Umang Bedi 1:07:42 Yeah, interesting.

Speaker 1:07:42 Previously, it was done using very complex cameras, very high-resolution photos. Now you can do it in-

Umang Bedi 1:07:47 There's a company called Interality who's, who's also doing this.

1:07:50 Yeah. Because the use cases are amazing, right? When you think about it, I mean, we... Look, gaming and entertainment is a no-brainer-

1:07:56 Of course

1:07:57 ... right? But education, learning, uh, uh, medicine, man.

1:08:02 Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

1:08:03 You know, through the pandemic, we all, you know-

1:08:05 Yeah

1:08:05 ... if you fell ill-

1:08:06 Yeah

1:08:06 ... it was such a boon. I mean, Zoom felt like ChatGPT back then, [laughing] right? I mean, when there's a need.

Host 1:08:12 Yeah, but-

Nikhil Kamath 1:08:12 We're hearing a lot of pro-Microsoft dialogues in this conversation tonight, aren't we? [laughing]

Host 1:08:17 [laughing]

Umang Bedi 1:08:17 Yeah.

1:08:18 Zoom is not, though. You can't share screens.

Speaker 1:08:19 So Microsoft is also coming to Meta. Uh-

Umang Bedi 1:08:22 Metaverse?

Speaker 1:08:22 M- Microsoft Teams and Office is coming to Facebook's version of Meta, so they're partnering, actually.

Umang Bedi 1:08:27 Yeah.

1:08:27 Yeah, but there, it looks awful, though.

1:08:28 Yeah.

1:08:29 Like, that doesn't look good. But in the short term, um, it, it will benefit, it will benefit folks who already have leverage. Like, if I'm a hospital and I have 50 chains across the world-

1:08:41 Yeah

1:08:42 ... and I have all this data about the smokers who come into the hospital, and there are, these are the problems that smokers have. Um, so now if I have, if I have AI, I basically have data that I can use to train this AI model.

1:08:56 Mm.

1:08:56 And that can start spitting out, saying, "You know, based on the data, this is how you should probably treat-

1:09:01 Yeah

1:09:01 ... the next thing." So if you ha- if you have the leverage of data, in the short term at least, you have a significant leg up-

1:09:07 Yeah

1:09:08 ... in the AI world.

Speaker 1:09:09 Uh, we also believe that everything does not need to be on the metaverse. Like, it, it's not necessary that you get everything.

Umang Bedi 1:09:15 Mm.

Speaker 1:09:15 For example, like, uh... So it's ease of convenience, right? So let's say you have to put out a tweet or a Koo. Uh, it's very easy to pull out your phone and type it out. But in a metaverse, you have to wear the headset, you go into a 3D world, so the convenience actually decreases.

Umang Bedi 1:09:30 That's a great point.

1:09:30 So-

Host 1:09:30 I think we're assuming that the hardware will evolve so quickly that it'll be like your glasses at some point-

Umang Bedi 1:09:37 Correct

Host 1:09:37 ... in the near future.

Nikhil Kamath 1:09:37 What do you think from a climate change standpoint? Do you think metaverse is the answer?

Umang Bedi 1:09:45 Wow, this is a question above my pay grade.

Speaker 1:09:48 So there's a lot of- [laughing]

Host 1:09:50 [laughing]

Umang Bedi 1:09:50 [laughing]

Speaker 1:09:51 I think there's a lot of computing power that goes into-

Umang Bedi 1:09:54 Uh-huh

Speaker 1:09:54 ... building this infrastructure-

Umang Bedi 1:09:55 Yeah

Speaker 1:09:55 ... that's not good for the environment.

Nikhil Kamath 1:09:57 But if you were to compare, say, I had to go travel to Saudi Arabia for a meeting in two days. If I can do the meeting in a manner like we're sitting next to each other-

Umang Bedi 1:10:08 Yeah

Nikhil Kamath 1:10:08 ... can you really equate the computing cost with the plane ride, the cost of the taxi ride, the fuel-

Umang Bedi 1:10:14 You can do Zoom right now, you know

Nikhil Kamath 1:10:15 ... all of that? But it doesn't feel-

Host 1:10:17 It does

Nikhil Kamath 1:10:17 ... like you're-

Umang Bedi 1:10:17 Yeah

Nikhil Kamath 1:10:17 ... with each other.

Umang Bedi 1:10:18 Yeah.

Nikhil Kamath 1:10:18 You know, Zoom does not feel like this.

Umang Bedi 1:10:20 Zoom doesn't feel like this.

Nikhil Kamath 1:10:20 Like, the four of us could have done this on Zoom, but-

Umang Bedi 1:10:22 Correct, yeah.

Nikhil Kamath 1:10:23 It wouldn't have felt the same.

Umang Bedi 1:10:23 It wouldn't have been the same.

1:10:24 Yeah, yeah. Fair. No, it... I think, uh, as compute gets more efficient, it definitely is a greener solution, right? If the applicability is around, let's say, commute, shopping, meetings, interactions, it is... I don't know th- I don't know if it's the answer, but it's definitely-

1:10:42 It'll, it'll reduce it

1:10:43 ... far better in terms of reducing carbon emissions. Of course, you're right that, uh, even compute has to get more green, right? I mean, in the sense in, in so many ways.

1:10:53 Yeah.

1:10:53 Um, but I definitely think it's a step forward.

Nikhil Kamath 1:10:56 Yeah. I think that's a big thing to ponder over, right? Like-

Umang Bedi 1:10:59 Yeah

Nikhil Kamath 1:11:00 ... today, when it is a possibility, we are thinking, but tomorrow, when it becomes a inevitability-

Speaker 1:11:06 Mm

Nikhil Kamath 1:11:06 ... do we all switch very quickly to be more efficient with how we use energy around us?

Speaker 1:11:13 I think the path to go there will consume a lot of energy, but if you compare sequences-

Umang Bedi 1:11:18 Yeah

Speaker 1:11:18 ... then it might... For example, creating an electric car actually uses a lot of emissions, but using it does not.

Host 1:11:24 Yeah.

Nikhil Kamath 1:11:24 We're planning to have a conversation about that. [chuckles]

Umang Bedi 1:11:27 Yes. [chuckles] Probably on that note.

Nikhil Kamath 1:11:30 Yeah. Should we call it?

Umang Bedi 1:11:32 Yeah.

1:11:32 Yeah, sounds good.

Nikhil Kamath 1:11:33 Did we all, like, uh... Do you all wanna, like, do one conclusion, what we got from today's discussion?

Umang Bedi 1:11:39 I'd like to do one.

Nikhil Kamath 1:11:39 Yeah.

Umang Bedi 1:11:40 Like, share, and subscribe to this new channel. [laughing]

Host 1:11:44 [laughing]

Umang Bedi 1:11:44 [laughing]

1:11:44 Nikhil is going to sit down with many more friends-

Host 1:11:46 [laughing]

Umang Bedi 1:11:46 ... who are incredibly smart, who can come, uh, answer our dumb questions.

1:11:51 Yeah, I think metaverse is definitely the future. Uh, some of, some of the most important things will go there, and, you know, we'll, we'll probably become less human because the, the friction to actually meet somebody in person will be much higher, right? If you can get everything at home, you know, so-

1:12:12 Oh, man, the number of times people will cancel plans now. [laughing]

1:12:15 Yeah. [laughing]

Nikhil Kamath 1:12:15 [laughing]

Umang Bedi 1:12:15 Already, it's pretty bad.

1:12:17 Yeah, so I think-

Nikhil Kamath 1:12:17 But imagine the amount of time you save in commute and all of that. You just, like, run into each other, eh?

Umang Bedi 1:12:22 Correct.

Nikhil Kamath 1:12:22 [laughing]

Umang Bedi 1:12:22 Just cancel your Saudi flight, man-

Host 1:12:23 [laughing]

Umang Bedi 1:12:23 ... it's upsetting you so much.

1:12:25 [laughing]

Nikhil Kamath 1:12:25 [laughing]

Umang Bedi 1:12:25 So, I think I, I just think that, you know, only the most important things in life will be real.

Nikhil Kamath 1:12:32 Mm-hmm.

Umang Bedi 1:12:32 Everything else, metaverse, some online thing, some automated shit.

Nikhil Kamath 1:12:37 Imagine if you start living in a virtual world-

Umang Bedi 1:12:40 Yeah

Nikhil Kamath 1:12:40 ... then you'll have kids in the virtual world as well.

Umang Bedi 1:12:43 Yeah, it will get delivered somewhere. [laughing]

1:12:46 [laughing]

Host 1:12:46 [laughing]

Umang Bedi 1:12:46 Why does your mind go to population every single time?

Nikhil Kamath 1:12:49 Yeah, I think it's quickly becoming one of the biggest problems on the planet, right? We're not reproducing enough.

Umang Bedi 1:12:54 We're not reproducing enough.

1:12:55 No, so, as in there are artificial solutions.

1:12:57 That's the only problem India doesn't have.

Host 1:12:59 Yeah.

Nikhil Kamath 1:12:59 But I'll, but I-

Speaker 1:13:00 Then why, why, why don't you reproduce? [laughing]

Nikhil Kamath 1:13:02 Huh? I'm waiting for you. [laughing]

Umang Bedi 1:13:05 [laughing]

Host 1:13:05 [laughing]

Umang Bedi 1:13:05 All right, this is a good time to end it.

Nikhil Kamath 1:13:06 [laughing] Hey, wait. We are among.

Umang Bedi 1:13:09 Uh, among, yeah, yeah.

1:13:09 No, I think, uh, you know, experiences, at the end of the day, are goosebumps, right? And technology is just an enabler-

1:13:16 Right

1:13:16 ... uh, to drive those goosebumps. And I think metaverse will have, will, will provide those moments, and technology will provide those moments. But I'm a big believer in this. But, uh, nothing replaces this, right, at the end of the day. I think these experiences will get utilitarian. These experiences will help with conveniences, these experiences will help with healthcare, financial services, travel. Experiencing, you know, even an F1 race or an IPL cricket game, if you can't travel. But at the end of the day, I think nothing will replace human interaction in the physical world, because there is that need. We are a social being-

1:13:50 Of course

1:13:50 ... and nothing replaces this, right? Uh-

1:13:53 Why don't you guys go check out Kyra? It's kyraonig on Instagram.

Host 1:13:57 Yes.

Umang Bedi 1:13:57 Tell us if our babies will be good-looking. [laughing]

Host 1:13:59 [laughing]

Nikhil Kamath 1:13:59 [laughing]

Umang Bedi 1:13:59 See you next time.

Nikhil Kamath 1:14:01 Okay, thank you all for watching. Bye, bye.

Host 1:14:04 Thank you. [upbeat music] I'm playing Beat Saber [laughing] very cool, right?

Umang Bedi 1:14:15 Dude, did you know you had a body in this?

Host 1:14:17 Beat Saber death.

Umang Bedi 1:14:20 I can see my hands. I suddenly saw my legs. [laughing]

1:14:23 [laughing]

1:14:23 Which is a little weird, and I also saw my crotch. Okay, that's not really good. [laughing]

Host 1:14:27 Am I the only one who's very-

Nikhil Kamath 1:14:28 How do you make sure your head is straight when you don't bend down?

Host 1:14:31 That's 'cause I have spinal strength. [upbeat music]

Umang Bedi 1:14:42 Yeah, how do I... How do you do my left? [laughing]

1:14:45 [laughing]

Nikhil Kamath 1:14:46 What are you watching?

Host 1:14:47 You want the Money Podcast. [laughing]

Umang Bedi 1:14:49 [laughing]

Host 1:14:53 Search.

Nikhil Kamath 1:14:53 Oh! Oh, shit.

Umang Bedi 1:14:56 Oh, beautiful. [laughing] Fuck, I love this. [upbeat music]