Susan Freeman
Hi, I’m Susan Freeman, welcome back to our PropertyShe podcast series brought to you by Mishcon de Reya, in association with the London Real Estate Forum, where I get to interview some of the key influencers in the world of real estate and the built environment. Today I am delighted to welcome Hrish Lotlikar. Hrish is a Co-Founder and CEO at SuperWorld, a virtual world in augmented reality. Previously, he co-founded Rogue Initiative Studios, a Hollywood film, TV, gaming, and immersive entertainment studio. He was also the founding Managing Partner of Eastlabs, an early-stage VC fund based in Kyiv, Ukraine. Previously, Hrish was a Senior Business Developer and Global Evangelist at Toptal and VC investor and an investment banker at both UBS Investment Bank and HSBC Securities, where he specialised in public finance, corporate finance and M&A. Hrish was born in India and grew up in the United States. He also has spent many years living around the world in Europe, Asia and South America. Hrish holds a BA in Political Science from Rice University, Houston Texas and an MBA and MPH from University of Illinois at Chicago.
So, now we are going to hear from Hrish Lotlikar on his vision for SuperWorld and how the metaverse is going to affect us all. Hrish, good afternoon. Where are you speaking to me from today?
Hrish Lotlikar
I’m in Czech Republic, in Prague, this week.
Susan Freeman
Oh how wonderful. I think it’s fair to say that you travel quite a lot and I know you were born in India, you were sort of educated in different places, can you tell us a little bit about, you know, your background, where you were brought up and how this sort of quite nomadic lifestyle came about?
Hrish Lotlikar
Yeah, so, you know, I grew up travelling quite a bit with my parents. I was born in India, I grew up in the United States but just travelled with my family growing up. I went to undergrad in the United States at Rice University grad school in Illinois. Between college and grad school I lived in Madrid, Paris and London and that kind of opened my mind up to you know living around the world and being places besides just the travel I’d done and you know about eight years ago, I had found myself living in Eastern Europe so, you know, again I’m kind of skipping ahead but I started a venture capital fund in Europe about ten years ago and when I was there, I had come to this realisation that, you know, I want to do really live around the world and I’d just live somewhere and travel but kind of be a native in many, many places and that’s what kind of, you know again got me to you know start living nomadically, living very globally so, you know, now it’s been a long time in doing that. I’m married with two kids, just to give you a sense, my six year old daughter has lived in like eighteen countries now so, you know, we’ve travelled a lot and we love it and you know again, it’s really just zooming out on the world and being really excited about getting to know different cultures, places, languages and like I said, doing it as a native, that’s kind of the focus of that.
Susan Freeman
It’s wonderful to have that opportunity and has your lifestyle been something that contributed to your vision for SuperWorld?
Hrish Lotlikar
Yeah, very much so. You know, it’s funny how life kind of works that way but you know I kind of always had this you know very strong interest in the world, seeing the world, knowing the world and you know I think the vision that we have at SuperWorld is how can we, you know, empower anyone to create a world, right, to be able to create, discover and monetise anything, anywhere and to be able to own the world around them and so, you know again, on that discovery piece, which I can go into when we talk more about SuperWorld specifically but it’s really about how can you again without having to travel, be able to experience things virtually or if you can be there in person, be also to benefit from you know virtuality so, it’s this physical-virtual, virtual-physical kind of connection there.
Susan Freeman
And before we talk about SuperWorld and we’re going to talk about SuperWorld in some detail, people talk a lot about the metaverse and I find, particularly with real estate people, you know, I mention metaverse, they look at me a little bit blankly as if you know this possibly isn’t something that concerns them so, just to set the scene, in very simple terms can you tell our listeners what the metaverse is and whether it actually exists as yet.
Hrish Lotlikar
Yeah, you know I think the, there are a lot of different ways to think about this term. Matthew Ball, who is credited with you know a variety of writings on the subject, I think it’s a really great resource, so is a good friend, Tony Parisi, who has The Seven Rules of The Metaverse, which are both great resources. I think the metaverse is really you know our understanding that you know what you do in your physical life can benefit from virtuality and what you are doing you know in a virtual, digital sense can also unlock opportunities in your physical life. I think you know we kind of think of them as two distinct things. You are either like online or you are outside in you know your physical life doing something that’s unrelated to kind of being on the web or on your computer device. You know, I think what’s happening is, is those two things are coming together and for some people, they are already living that lifestyle and you know a lot of us are, whether it’s being on Zoom calls and then going into a live meeting or being able to do some kind of virtual kind of walk through of an apartment before you go into the apartment and maybe try to rent it or buy it, you know we’re engaging in these things but we don’t do that in every part of our life, right, so sometimes we are just going on a run and that’s it, it’s a run, you know but how can you benefit from you know virtuality in different ways whether it’s where you are locationally, whether where you want to go, how can you experience things in AR, VR, you know can you add Web3 to that, you know being able, if we’re all kind of coming to the conclusion that we’re gonna be more virtual in our lives or naturally we’re becoming that way and the last few years with Covid, we all have gone more virtual, right, and you know some of the concepts of the metaverse relates to Web3 and being able to own this virtuality, own these areas around you. Those are the new concepts to a lot of people, right, they’re used to you know being on the web or being on websites but not necessarily owning the content or owning the platforms that they’re part of and that’s where you know this term metaverse really is the most impactful when you talk about terms like the open metaverse, which is what I’m referring to when it, when we think about interoperability of assets that you can actually own.
Susan Freeman
And, yeah, this word interoperability because I know there are a number of virtual worlds and SuperWorld is one of them and what I don’t necessarily understand is how, you know, how these different worlds are going to work together but I see that there’s something relatively new, the Open Metaverse Alliance, which looks as if it’s a collaboration between a number of the leading virtual worlds and might actually take us a step closer to actually having this metaverse where these various worlds link up.
Hrish Lotlikar
That’s right. Yeah, so the Open Metaverse Alliance, which SuperWorld is a founding member of, is really focussed around how can we you know bring together virtual worlds and put together standards that contribute and facilitate interoperability of digital assets. How can we come together as virtual worlds to bring about those standards in a way that really you know service and you know provide value to our customers and be able to do that way so we’re not building walled gardens between all of these virtual worlds but we’re actually, again, bringing value to customers so they have the ability to you know again buy assets to participate, take those things across their life as they visit virtual worlds of all different types and again physical, virtual linkage. So those are the things that are very important and you know it really took the leadership of my colleagues and all of us to really come together and realise that was very important. Animoca Brands, which again is a very big kind of investor and company that’s very involved in this space, you know involved in a lot of the companies there as well, you know again their leadership in this space has also been very evident because they believe in the open metaverse philosophy and standards and the benefits that it brings to the overall ecosystem so, that’s what we believe in at SuperWorld as well.
Susan Freeman
Well, it sounds like quite a step forward, that’s really good news. So, let’s talk about SuperWorld. Perhaps we could start with how SuperWorld works, how it’s different from some of the other virtual worlds out there?
Hrish Lotlikar
SuperWorld is a virtual world built on top of the real world. So, it’s all around us, we’re in it right now. You have a world, I have a world, brands have worlds. So, if I come to London, New York, Tokyo, Los Angeles, anywhere in the world, you could say Hrish, why don’t you check out my world and I could walk around and you’ve left me things, you’ve left a hologram of yourself taking me a walk around your neighbourhood, showing me your favourite places, you’ve left content of all sorts, maybe trips you’ve gone on, family you know photos, anything you want, right, you have the full ability to kind of create the world around you, you put digital assets in different places, NFTs that I could click on and activate, maybe buy things. Basically, the whole world, the world around us is like a video game in the real world. You have one, I have one, brands have one, there’s an infinite number of filters there and then you know I use that, I use an analogy, Pokémon Go, so if you’ve heard of that game or played it, you know it’s like digital information, people go and look for these Pokémons. Imagine that could be anything you want it to be, that’s what SuperWorld’s about. And then the other big part of it is, you know, how can we again enable ownership of the world around us, so what we’ve done is we’ve divided the surface of the earth in the 64 billion properties of virtual real estate, so you can buy anywhere in the world, we’ve divided the world into hundred metre by a hundred metre blocks of virtual real estate and if you buy those properties, you become a stakeholder on the platform, you are able to benefit from the user activity and the monetisation that comes from advertising, digital commerce, ecommerce, data, gaming, analytics, decentralised finance, there’s a lot of things that are versioning in this space and by being able to own these places, now you become a key stakeholder in these places in the world that you probably love, maybe you have a business there, maybe you travel there, maybe you go you know go on vacation there, you live there every day, so we all have these places that are close to us and in SuperWorld you can own these places and help build the world together with us.
Susan Freeman
And who’s leading the way on this? What sort of people are buying plots and are they buying virtual assets that equate with the real assets that they already own or what? What sort of patterns are you seeing?
Hrish Lotlikar
Yeah, it’s a really interesting question. So, you know, I always say when I ask someone where they own land in SuperWorld, I hear stories. So, people always have these stories, which is great for me because I love, you know I love the world and I love travelling so, if I ask you where did you buy land, you’re going to be very specific, you’re going to tell me exactly where, you’re going to know exactly where, you’re going to tell me number two, a very personal reason why you are connected with those places, maybe you got married there, maybe you have a business there, maybe you go on vacation there, you grew up there, that’s where your favourite sports team plays, you know, it’s a historical place that you love so, everyone has these specific kind of themes, right, of where they’re acquiring property and most importantly, they’re telling us what they want to do there, right, so everyone has a very specific intent or purpose of what they want to build, what they want to see, what they want to do and so, you know again, our goal at SuperWorld is to enable them to do those things, build those things, discover that content that they want to maybe place in that location etc so, that’s the kind themes that we see as that the people that are buying are buying places that are very personal to them and places that they covet and love.
Susan Freeman
And of course if you are building on your virtual land, you haven’t got the same restrictions that you have in the real world, you can build it as big as you want and you don’t have to worry about getting your planning consent, at the moment.
Hrish Lotlikar
That’s right. So, the beauty of this is again, if we think of the world as a video game, you know, anyone you know can utilise tools and you know part of our goal is to build the tools that people want to use but you know there’s professional developers that can build in you know these gaming engines, Unity and Unreal Engine, and build pretty fantastical kind of things as well and the idea is that you know as we enable people to build the things that they love, there’s an infinite number of filters, right, so I can put something in a location but so can you and that’s in your world and you know whatever I put in my world as an example. And so you have an infinite number of possibilities, which means an infinite number of monetisation opportunities as well in any specific plot of virtual real estate and so, again, virtual real estate is a very different proposition than the physical real estate, just because we’re not limited as we are on the physical side in terms of creation and discovery and monetisation.
Susan Freeman
And are you seeing property companies actually now saying right, I own the real estate, I’m now going to buy the virtual version and actually create a sort of, I don’t know, digital twin, whatever but actually go for something that is already in their portfolio?
Hrish Lotlikar
Yes. Most definitely, which is really you know, makes a lot of sense. It’s also very interesting phenomenon to see that because of the parallels to the physical real estate market. My background is investment banking in New York many years ago and I did you know real estate investment banking, that’s kind of where I started off so, I understand the finance space as it relates to real estate and you know seeing physical land developers and owners understand the physical-virtual, virtual-physical possibilities and being able to you know help them not only acquire that real estate but also build projects that leverage Web3 you know NFTs, AR, VR, AI to be able to build in a platform like SuperWorld where they are actually able to own these areas in a decentralised fashion, is very powerful for them because they understand that in the physical world what it means to own a property and to develop a property and so the analogies are very similar as you apply them to virtuality expect, like I said earlier, like we discussed the monetisation potential is infinite because there’s an infinite number of filters in SuperWorld and you can really build anything you want.
Susan Freeman
And in terms of the monetisation, I mean we’re hearing quite a lot about virtual shopping centres and of course the luxury brands you know coming in, being able to display you know without being limited by time and you know showing things in different decades. How are you seeing people begin to monetise?
Hrish Lotlikar
Yeah, so you know the primary way that monetisation has been occurring in the Web3 space is through NFTs. So NFTs really took off last year and NFTs are a way of you know creating digital assets that provide authenticity to the owners, you know easy, transparent and transferability of those assets, so that structure is being utilised really predominantly across the industry for monetisation. Now, again, you know in SuperWorld you don’t have to just create NFTs, you could create any type of content and opportunities to monetise that, whether it’s an NFT or not an NFT is available, I mean there’s virtual worlds in the centralised you know environment. When I say centralised, you know centralised companies that have virtual worlds, like Fortnite as an example, they do hundreds of millions of dollars of revenue selling digital accessories in a video game, you know skins, different kinds of accessories, modifications etc. And what if you could apply all of those same concepts to the real world around you, right, and you know in our case, we sell NFTs so we enable people to have this structure, so they have they the authenticity of ownership, they have the decentralised nature of owning that asset in that way but you know that’s the number one way we see but you know, besides that you know gaming is another big category so just gaming in general, can you create a game in a virtual world and create monetisation that way. Ecommerce is another big category. Can you again click on a virtual item and go to a website and buy that item? Decentralised finance is also a very big category that’s going to become integrated and infused in virtual worlds, become more commonplace. You know, analytics, data, being able to understand the world around you, understand you know not only foot traffic and where people are but be able to market to them, understanding you know where people want to be or where people want to shop you know all of these kinds of things are all opportunities for monetisation.
Susan Freeman
And in terms of the foot traffic, I mean you do call foot traffic, it’s obviously visitors in some virtual way but is that just beginning because it’s obviously early days and you know how do you get people into SuperWorld to actually go to these places and you know take advantage of what’s there?
Hrish Lotlikar
Yeah, the beauty of SuperWorld is you are already in the real world, right, so SuperWorld is an overlay on top of the real world and so we’re not, to be clear, you know our vision is how can you leverage these technologies to enhance your real life? I call it live to earn. Live to earn is a concept of how can we use tokenomics to enable you to do the things that you love in the real world, whether it’s going to an event, you know whether you know if you are into buying a house or buying a car you know how do I get you to go to do some open houses you know can I use tokenomics to have a brand incentivise you to do these things? What about running the marathon? Can Nike you know give you incentives to participate in a marathon or Virgin Unite to do something good for the community, right? So the idea is again we’re focused on the real world in your real life and how to enhance your real life. And then the other part of it is, you know again our mission is how can we actually improve the real world? You know, we plant trees when you buy virtual real estate in SuperWorld, we are already partnered with the World Bank in the Caribbean to help raise money for hurricane disaster relief, we’re partnered with the United Nations and UNESCO to help rebuild cities around the world. In fact, a month ago we brought together two tribes in the Amazon jungle to create digital art in the Amazon that anyone could view from anywhere, to learn about reforestation. So, to answer your question, you know the beauty of this is we’re already doing things in the real world but the thing that you know, back to the metaverse question, is a lot of us don’t understand that they could actually connect to virtuality in all parts of their life. We’re doing it naturally when we’re on a Zoom call, right but we don’t know that hey, you know what, when I go to the next event maybe I could visualise that event or buy an NFT for that event or you know be able to get a collectable for attending that event, you know things like that, so that’s kind of the real kind of paradigm shift I think we’re going to have.
Susan Freeman
And to get sort of you know maximum enjoyment from this, do you have to use some sort of headset or how are people, I mean for instance if you go to a concert or something in SuperWorld, how would you best enjoy it?
Hrish Lotlikar
So, SuperWorld is again built on the web, right, it’s also built on mobile and the reason that we utilise those two mediums as a starting point is really because they have just the biggest kind of critical mass of users, everyone’s on the web so you can find us on the web, superworldapp.com, we have a map interface, you can see content that’s been placed all over the map. Basically, it’s a geospatial Web3 enabled map, right. And then again you could create content or NFTs using the website and then we have a mobile application where if you are in a location, kind of like Pokémon Go, you could lift up the phone and look around, you could place content in real world locations but ultimately, we’ll be on glasses, we’ll be on audio, we’ll be on haptic suits so, we’re hardware agnostic in terms of our vision but the reason we started with web and mobile is we’re building a mainstream metaverse platform and what we want to do is reach our customers, you know the thing that we hear a lot from brands is you know we want to get into the metaverse but we will lose 99% of our customers if we tell them that they need to make it, you know, build an avatar and go in some online mall to go shopping. What we love about SuperWorld is you are in the real world, you are where our customers are and where they want to be, which whether it’s their store, whether it’s the park, you know whether it’s on high street or main street, right and that’s exactly how we think about building and the ability to discover and create monetised content.
Susan Freeman
It’s really exciting, I mean there is so much, so much to do with it. And just go back to how you buy plots of virtual land, I mean how do you value it because I mean again we’ve seen a lot in the press, particularly last year about really large sums of money you know going for virtual shopping centres and does it have to cost that much? I mean how much would it cost somebody to buy their commercial you know office block in the virtual world?
Hrish Lotlikar
Yeah so you know, in SuperWorld every plot that’s unpurchased is priced at point one either for a city block of land, which is about $140 dollars at today’s pricing. You know, the price of ether goes up and down and so point one is about $140 dollars today but once you buy a block, let’s say you buy you know a wonderful place in London or New York or any of these places that you love, you own that, so it’s your property and you can reprice it to whatever you want, right, so again if you’re like, hey, you know this should be worth x amount, you can reprice it to that amount and again, it’s a digital asset that you own and so you have the ability to resell that plot to someone else who might want to buy it and so again, if someone is buying in the secondary market, so they’re buying you know a plot that someone else already owns then it’s the price is dictated by you know the buyer and seller and what they want to negotiate as selling price for that property. You know, I think the beauty of the platform and the fact that there’s 64 billion virtual plots of land in SuperWorld, is that when you come to SuperWorld you might have you know ten places in mind that you know are your favourite places in the world and you might find that the top four of those places are already purchased, right, but likely you’ll find that your choice five to ten might still be available for point one, so you know, we find that a lot of people do a mix of both, they buy some of these unpurchased properties and then they sometimes come and buy you know one of these marquee properties that maybe is already owned by someone and they go in and buy that too. So, pricing wise, that’s how it works right now.
Susan Freeman
So, if you are a property company and you own say a trophy asset in Paris, would you be well advised to be buying the virtual plot now before somebody else does?
Hrish Lotlikar
You know, we are seeing that so, you know a lot of our buyers of virtual real estate are physical landowners, so they own properties around the world in the physical world and they’re coming and buying the virtual real estate that’s the overlay on their property. And again just to be clear, we are selling a hundred metre by a hundred metre point zero one, point zero one longitude latitude properties that cover the surface of the earth. When you buy the virtual real estate, you don’t own the physical world, just to be clear, you are buying the virtual overlay on top of the real world and so, again we get a lot of people that you know again are owners of real world real estate and sometimes they buy places that they don’t own in the real world and they’re like, hey, you know what, I can’t buy Times Square, that’s already bought in the physical world but I’m going to go become a virtual land owner and developer and come and buy lots of properties that are marquee properties and we’re seeing both of those things happen, which is pretty exciting and interesting.
Susan Freeman
And again, we’ve seen a lot about the volatility of cryptocurrency and I just wondered how that was affecting the purchase and sale of virtual property?
Hrish Lotlikar
Yeah, so you know I think with what we’re doing, which is we’re building a world and you know we utilise cryptocurrency and blockchain to provide benefits to the super citizens that are involved in SuperWorld. Those benefits are that you are again creating a decentralised world where everyone can become an owner and own those assets outright. They’re able to have that ease of transferability, there’s transparency, you know there’s a lot of benefits that come from cryptocurrency as well as blockchain. Being that we’re creating applications and ultimately we’re creating a platform, right, a market network, you know the price of the cryptocurrency itself for us is not as much of a priority in the sense that we’re building tools for people to benefit from these technologies themselves, the foundational elements of what the blockchain is about and so in this recent you know drop in let’s say the price of Ethereum, what that means for us is, it’s cheaper for you to come on board and buy a plot of virtual real estate because maybe a few months ago, that plot was you know unpurchased, $250 for you to get into it, now it’s $140 and so, again, it’s making it easier. I would say, fundamentally, as prices go up and down, you know, I think we see interest in these types of things also go up and down. When the price of bitcoin goes up, everyone wants to get into you know NFTs or crypto or Web3. When the prices go down, there’s a you know disillusionment around these technologies but in our situation, we’re long-term believers in the technology that we’re building on, we’re very blockchain agnostic to be honest, we’re interoperable across you know different protocols, so we’re built on Ethereum, we’ve integrated with Polygon, you know we’re looking at other currencies. So for us, it’s less about the currency itself or the price of the currency and the fundamental technology.
Susan Freeman
Okay, but you have to use cryptocurrency to buy, you couldn’t come along with normal currency?
Hrish Lotlikar
You could. You could use a credit card on SuperWorld. We have multiple wallets in different integrations there and so you could, if you don’t have crypto, you could use a credit card but ultimately, the transaction would be executed on the blockchain and you would end up with a digital asset on the blockchain but you could pay with you know a standard credit card. So, we’re you know, again that’s a real kind of benefit that’s coming to this industry, which is on-ramps and off-ramps onto crypto and off of crypto with fiat currency, so, and that’s going to get better and better over time. Soon you are, you know you are going to see less and less friction to get onto crypto, I think in the next you know I’d say the next two years, you know there’s going to be a lot of things that you’re going to do that are going to be on the blockchain but you are just going to see the benefits of that, you’re not going to necessarily know that it’s you know an Ethereum product or on Polygon or something like that, you’re just going to, you’re going to know it’s your asset and that’s going to be the abstraction of the technology.
Susan Freeman
The interesting thing about the metaverse is that it isn’t really new, so people talk a lot about Second Life, which started I think twenty years ago, what has actually changed to make this really take off in the way that it has?
Hrish Lotlikar
That’s a really great question. So, Phil Rosedale is a friend and you know Second Life was an amazing world and it’s still around and does pretty well, I think they’re doing about sixty to eighty million dollars in revenue a year now, you know, and a great product and a great following and so it just shows you the long-term viability of these virtual worlds, right, once you reach a level of critical mass but you know to your question, there’s been a number of inflection points that happened over the last ten to fifteen years and more recently over the last few years so, you know you saw the growth of mobile technology, everyone now has a smartphone, everyone has this kind of GPS locational ability to you know understand their environment where they are, be able to look at maps and you know whether it’s grab an Uber or pick up an Airbnb near you, all of these kind of you know functionalities, locationally on their phone, benefit us greatly, you’ve gotten you know blockchain and NFTs really kind of demonstrate that we can own these assets around us in these virtual environments, the time and resources that we’re spending in a virtual environment can have a return for us if we kind of you know plan our strategy and kind of develop you know assets. We have the opportunity that we may have not happen before, again you have 5G technology right, so we’re able to download data and content much more easily and much more complex data and you have the again the fact that on the software side, when it comes to augmented reality and virtual reality, there’s been billions of dollars of investment that have gone into creating the software that enables us to put content, whether it’s gaming engines or you know what’s called the AR cloud, being able to put things in augmented reality around you. Finally, you have you know glasses and VR headsets and billions of dollars that have been spent to move their hardware from the phone to a more visual, more native kind of way of seeing that and then I would say on the more cultural and sociological inflexion points, you know things like Covid have really kind of demonstrated to all of us that you know, we might have to be more virtual and maybe we kind of like it in some ways, maybe it’s you know better than going into a daily commute or having to get on a fifteen hour flight and being away from our families, maybe there’s some good benefits of doing some things virtually and by the way, you know I’m a real physical world person, right, so I’m actually someone that actually enjoys the real world and so, you know, again the ability to create a world like we had at SuperWorld, where you can be in the physical world, a world that wants to enhance your physical life but then also have the opportunity to take advantage of all these technologies and inflexion points that have really happened and brought us to where we are now and that’s the big opportunity.
Susan Freeman
And yet a recent survey in the UK showed that 54% of mid to late career real estate professionals expect that the metaverse will have no impact on the sector at all. What would you say to them, Hrish?
Hrish Lotlikar
Well, you know again, in any technology cycle and I think we face a lot of these same types of questions, right, whether it was the internet, whether it was you know mobile phone technology, whether it was you know going from buttons on your mobile phone to a screen that you press, right, you know and all of those different transitions there are those that kind of question how quickly that technology is going to become impactful and in some cases, whether that’s going to happen at all. You know, I think that you know anyone that works in the real estate space I think would agree that there is a lot of friction to you know doing deals, to you know whether it’s viewing a property, understanding a property, being able to transact globally, nationally, you know whatever it happens to be, whatever kind of business that you are in, real estate is an industry that has a lot of friction, rightfully so, there’s you know it is a very complicated industry, there’s a lot of different moving parts there and so, you know again, some of these technologies are you know again the goal of utilising them, whether it’s blockchain, Web3, type decentralisation, you know transparency of information and being able to transact very frictionlessly. We’re getting there and so those things are happening and you know there are properties being sold as NFTs. Some of those things still rely on the centralised mechanisms, right, so there are good points there made by people that believe that there is going to be still challenges to get there, which I agree with but you know you really can’t argue with what we’re seeing from architects who create structures digitally, who want to create structures physically but can’t find the financing but have an amazing kind of digital structure and you know, can we use these technologies to enable these structures to come to life, can we visualise things before we go and see a property? You know, those things are already happening, they’ve been happening for years, right, that’s how every modern structure is created and so we take that for granted but it doesn’t take us you know I think that much more to get to this world where back to digital twins, you’re able to again utilise these technologies to do much more than just you know do a construction but actually to transact, to understand properties, to be able to develop and to again augment an ameliorate the physical world around us, using virtuality and so that’s coming and I think it’s a foregone conclusion but again, like everything else, like every other technology cycle that happens, you know it takes some time for the obvious to become obvious.
Susan Freeman
And are you seeing architects actually using SuperWorld to construct you know their idea, the building that they want to build in the real world but they haven’t been able to get backing for? Do you actually see that?
Hrish Lotlikar
Yes. Yeah, we’re seeing that, we’re very close to a number of you know real estate developers and who tell companies and architects specifically that have talked to us about that, you know they have ideas that they want to bring to life and you know one of the use cases here is how can we again create content for them to you know to enable you know financiers as an example, to discover these buildings and these structures that you know, before may have never seen the light of day and now you can again maybe buy something or visualise something virtually first and then you know, utilising, define and even traditional finance be able to make that become a reality or to sell it in just a virtual way, that’s also something that you know a lot of people are doing and we’ve done that in SuperWorld, right, so we’ve had architects create you know virtual homes, virtual kind of pods that you can again buy the virtual pod and then you can rent or stay in the real virtual home, in the real physical home I should say. We’ve had you know luxury clubs like Custom House, which have sold digital assets and the buyer of the asset gets a, you know, a membership to the luxury club. Now, why do they do it that way? It’s because the buyer of that asset can resell the asset so it’s innovating on their business model. So there’s a lot of different ways to kind of use these technologies and we’re seeing a very, a large number of interesting kind of ideas that are coming from the community here, which is very exciting.
Susan Freeman
Yes, that crossover between the virtual world and the real world is really, is quite fascinating. And since you are travelling across the globe, are you seeing take up for this sort of stronger in some parts of the world than other parts of the world or is it all a bit of a learning curve at the moment?
Hrish Lotlikar
Well, you know, I think that you know the beauty of technology, and you can see this with the iPhone and I think Steve Jobs talked a lot about this, was that you know he would travel around and see you know the similarities that people have around the world to working and to playing and to you know educating themselves with technology, right, whether it’s the iPhone or your mac or you know whatever, whatever device that you prefer and so similar to that, you know blockchain and crypto and AR, VR and AI and all of these technologies have a very, you know, global appreciation. Obviously, there’s, you know, smaller segments of the population that are more into it, there’s I think a great phrase by William Gibson, you know, “The future is already here” but it’s unevenly distributed. So, you know, certain people are more into this in every society, right, than others and so we’re definitely seeing that, there’s definitely pockets of people around the world that are forward in terms of immersive technology or Web3. What’s really interesting is the convergence that’s happening in all of these technologies really coming together, which is very exciting. I would say you know we’ve been in this space for a long time I would say, you know, five, six years ago you had a lot of people that were into immersive technology that weren’t as much into Web3 or vice versa. You are still seeing that but now with the metaverse, you are really bringing all of these technologies together and so now you are seeing pockets of people around the world that are into these combination of all these technologies, which is really what we embrace at SuperWorld.
Susan Freeman
And the value of real estate has always been in its location and the fact that there is a finite supply. I mean, does the same thing apply in SuperWorld and in the metaverse or can somebody just start a new virtual world and you know opening up a sort of new source of virtual real estate?
Hrish Lotlikar
Yeah, so you know, the important thing to understand is, ultimately this is technology, right, so again anyone can utilise technology, so you could create a virtual world, anyone can and there’s a lot of brands that create their own, you know, quote unquote metaverses or virtual worlds, right. The beauty of what we’re building at SuperWorld is again, we’ve built a very open platform, where again we’re a founding member of the Open Metaverse Alliance but our vision has always been to again empower people and to improve the world, that’s our mission, right, empower people in their real lives and build a better world. And so, you know SuperWorld is a community, I always say it’s a movement, it’s a movement of people coming together and realising they have an opportunity to build a world together. They can own places, they can create content, they can discover content, they can you know again come to us and talk to us about things that we should be building or you know things that are road map, we’re all kind of building this together alongside our investment partners and community. And so, at the end of the day, that’s what SuperWorld is, it’s not just the technology. The technology again is out there but when you buy land in SuperWorld, you are buying part of that again mission to build with us, to empower people and to build a better world and that is what the power of this community and movement is all about and you know Web3 technologies really bolsters that as well because of decentralisation, being able to own assets, we’re going to be launching a token, you know we’re partnered with Outlier Ventures in London who’s again a big proponent of the open metaverse movement, very close to Animoca and others and so you know our goal is to again embrace the community, enable and empower people and so ultimately what we’re seeing is people that want to build, whether they want to build their own virtual world, they want to build it in the SuperWorld or connect it in the SuperWorld, which is what we really again empower and enable people to do.
Susan Freeman
And how does SuperWorld work for artists and musicians? How do they sort of create galleries and concerts and things? Do they work with you to do that?
Hrish Lotlikar
Yes, so you know, that goes back to kind of what I was saying about stories. So I hear stories and I love the stories from artists. So as an example, we just launched a temple in Egypt, a very famous artist named VESA launched the Luxor Temple and I think you can go to VESA.SuperWorldapp.com and see that and it’s a WebGL, you know 3D temple and he has his artwork all around the temple and again, this was something that he imagined and you know came to us and we partnered and helped build with VESA directly. The other thing is, is what we are doing is providing tools and features that enable anyone to create and place content anywhere, so we’ve had you know artwork placed in Times Square and Central Park and Miami Art Week, where you literally have artists who are not you know part of Miami Art Week, able to place their art in the same exact places in the convention centres etc, where you know the artists that are part of that and so you can really again market yourself, discover amazing works of art, you know buy works of art and you can do all these things using NFTs and digital assets and so the answer to your question is, we want to partner with artists who come to us and want to build so we’re always open to doing that but we’re also you know very focussed on building the tools, where you can actually just share from your camera roll, you know you can share and put in artwork right into augmented reality, you know someone sold the first piece of art right in Times Square I think last year in SuperWorld so you know again, the ability to do that on your own is also a big part of the vision at SuperWorld.
Susan Freeman
And what changes are you expecting to see in the metaverse? Say, you know in the next five years because things seem to be happening really quickly.
Hrish Lotlikar
Well, you know I think that you are a hundred percent right that things are happening so quickly. You know, there’s a great book by Peter Diamandis, I think The Future is Coming Faster Than You Think or something like that, it’s a great book, I highly recommend it and you know it just really talks about the convergence of all of these technologies in our life that are bringing the future into the present super-fast so, you know I think as it relates to the metaverse, the first thing is that you are seeing artificial intelligence like DALL-E which is a you know a recent advancement, enable people to create artwork by just you know saying a few words, right, you can type you know a couple of words into, into your computer and it’ll produce an original artwork based on those words, it’s pretty amazing. So, you see AI as it relates to content generation already here and that’s going to be transformative, you see the ability for hardware to advance how we are accessing content, so and glasses are coming they are going to be transformational for our daily lives when you can wear a set of glasses and you don’t have to look at your phone all day and you could look around. That is coming and it’s going to, like I said, going to have a huge impact. Blockchain technology, again on a foundational level, I would say you know a lot of people don’t understand what NFTs are and NFTs are again are you know you need digital certificates for anything, that’s the best way to think about it, so like anything can be an NFT but life around us is all non-fungible, meaning everything is unique around us, every little object you look around is unique so if you can identify all of those objects, there’s a lot of power that comes from that and so IOT, being able to have this contextual understanding on your environment. You know, all these things I think are going to be pretty transformational in the next two to four years, if not in the next ten years, we’re going to see seismic shifts in you know how we can interact with each other, how we create community, how we own and build livelihoods, you know they always say the jobs of the future are jobs that don’t even exist today and I think you’re going to see a lot more of that over the next ten years.
Susan Freeman
It sounds like it and at the moment there is very little in the way of regulation, so everything is evolving in different ways, I mean do you think it needs regulation and will it come through bodies like the Open Metaverse Alliance now that you’ve got together and sort of looking at what needs to be regulated?
Hrish Lotlikar
Yeah, so you know again I think that regulation will definitely enable you know developers and entrepreneurs, the community itself, citizens around the world to be able to interact with these technologies, entrepreneurs to build the technologies and to do so under frameworks that enable them to again spur innovation, that would be the goal and also to make sure that people are educated about these technologies, which is all very positive. I think the, again, you know Open Metaverse Alliance and such groups and the companies that are involved in those groups, like SuperWorld, are really again leading the way to kind of help some of this stuff you know come to fruition or help provide frameworks and guidelines for some of that. So that’s all very positive but yeah, I think that over the next you know two to four years, you’re going to start seeing more regulation and more of these frameworks that are going to I think empower everyone to be able to understand what this future is all about and ultimately, I think it’ll be very positive because people will understand you know how they can benefit and how they can integrate and how they can build and so that’s very positive for the overall ecosystem.
Susan Freeman
And speaking as a lawyer, it sounds as if there’s going to be room for lawyers selling their services in the metaverse?
Hrish Lotlikar
Yep, yep, already is. Lots of lawyers in the metaverse for sure.
Susan Freeman
Well Hrish, that is, was so interesting, absolutely fascinating and a lot to think about and I hope to see you actually in real life in London sometime soon and we’ll all watch progress with SuperWorld with great interest. Thank you very much.
Hrish Lotlikar
Thanks for having me, I wish, I was almost in London last weekend, so we’ll have to do it soon and we’ll definitely meet up, I’m looking forward to it. Thanks again for the opportunity.
Susan Freeman
Okay. Thank you very much.
Hrish Lotlikar
See ya.
Susan Freeman
Thank you so much, Hrish for talking to us about SuperWorld and initiating us into the huge potential of the metaverse.
So, that’s it for now. I hope you enjoyed today’s conversation. Please join us for the next PropertyShe podcast interview coming very soon.
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