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At the second edition of Fuel for India, Mark Zuckerberg, Founder and CEO, Meta, said, no single company will build the Metaverse. Rather, millions of creators and developers from around the world, especially those from India, will come together to build content and virtual goods that will form the Metaverse.

“The Metaverse needs to be built in a bottom-up way, and Meta can help accelerate the funding and development of platforms to enable a distributed set of creators to build virtual worlds, goods, and experiences. We will see a huge amount of stuff built in India, owing to its vibrant entrepreneurial, creator, and developer ecosystem,” he told Vishal Shah, VP, Metaverse, Meta.

Zuckerberg sees the Metaverse as a shared world where users can hang out with friends, attend concerts, play games, engage in fitness activities, etc., all while feeling like they are physically present at the virtual venue or location.

Facebook’s Meta rebrand

Meta’s new corporate identity comes at a time where the company envisions an alternate virtual existence of individuals by employing AR and VR technologies. Around the time Facebook rebranded to Meta, Mark said in a blog post:

“In this future, you will be able to teleport instantly as a hologram to be at the office without a commute, at a concert with friends, or in your parents’ living room to catch up. This will open up more opportunity, no matter where you live. You’ll be able to spend more time on what matters to you, cut down time in traffic, and reduce your carbon footprint.”

The Metaverse concept was first mentioned in the 1992 science-fiction novel Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson. In simple terms, the metaverse is an online, 3D universe that combines various virtual spaces. This 3D universe will allow users across the globe to meet, chat, work, and participate in games together.

Zuckerberg believes the Metaverse will unlock a massively larger creative economy than the one constrained by today’s platforms and their policies.

“In India, the Internet economy is already being fuelled at scale by the nation’s entrepreneurial spirit. This makes us optimistic that the next generation of creators and developers can come from India and build the foundations of the Metaverse. We are looking to build foundational tools and core technologies around this,” Zuckerberg added at Fuel for India.

During the session, Vishal Shah explained that building capabilities in AR/VR from an early stage is important, and that Meta is setting aside $150 million to empower and enable creators to build on top of digital worlds.