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Hello reader,
My grandmother is a straight-talking woman born in the pre-independent India of the 1930s. She delights in telling me stories of her past – about how she navigated an uncertain political landscape or how she is in awe of all this technological advancement.
Her face lights up as she fondly recalls the first time she came across a radio set: It was a gift from her uncle and she remembers how she would sit with her family by the radio set for hours, listening to the news, vibing to music, and laughing over comic skits. How times change, right?
By now, you’ve probably realized my grandmother is not really tech-savvy and hardly uses the internet. She still reacts with a child-like chuckle of wonder every time she gets a WhatsApp message. The prospect of explaining the metaverse to her ties my stomach in knots.
On that note, today we probe whether Sea Group is ready to dip its toes into the metaverse. Also, if you are an entrepreneur looking for funding, fill in this form to get your company featured on our list of fundraising startups.
Today we look at,
- Sea Group’s prospects in the metaverse world
- Zoomcar’s aggressive expansion through SEA
- Other newsy highlights such as Grab settling with ex-staffers in Vietnam and Good Glamm’s acquisition of MissMalini Entertainment
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Carpe Diem: Seas the day
Image credit: Timmy Loen
If you look closely, you’ll notice that bits of the metaverse are already around us. As we stand on the cusp of a technological revolution, it is important to realize that the metaverse will not spring to life all of a sudden. For the metaverse to well and truly take off, it’s crucial that companies collaborate with each other. That’s why Tech in Asia took a deep dive at whether Sea Group has the necessary tools to become a key player in this space.
- Leaving a trail in the dark: Does Sea have any plans for the metaverse? It hasn’t given any indication of this yet. However, the firm’s recent actions provide some food for thought. Sea has already achieved a form of interoperability – a key concept that some say is critical in the metaverse – by ensuring players of its gaming titles, Free Fire and Free Fire Max, can play together seamlessly.
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Advantage, Sea Group: Sea’s core businesses, Shopee and SeaMoney, are focused on ecommerce and payments, respectively, which are important building blocks of the metaverse. Shopee, which started out selling physical goods, is already branching out in various directions, offering digital vouchers, food delivery, and more. Adding virtual items to the mix wouldn’t be far-fetched.
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All clues point toward the metaverse: Sea Capital, the company’s investment arm, has made a couple of relevant investments in the crypto assets space. One of them is Forte, which helps gaming publishers incorporate blockchain technology into their games. This allows non-fungible tokens (NFTs), which are crucial to the metaverse, to be minted and sold within games, allowing players to freely trade goods and services with each other.
Vroom Vroom! Accelerating through SEA
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