India Becomes the Largest Creator Hub for The Sandbox in the Metaverse

India Emerges as the Largest Content Creator Hub for The Sandbox

India has officially become the largest source of content creators for the Metaverse platform, The Sandbox. This development comes as the user base of the platform has doubled to an impressive 350,000 in less than a year. The Sandbox, a prominent player in the Web3 space, had announced its ambition to make India its largest market back in December.

Currently, India boasts a remarkable 66,000 creators engaged in developing immersive games and experiences for the platform. This number surpasses that of the United States, which has 59,989 creators, and Brazil, which is home to 25,335 creators. The co-founder of The Sandbox, Sebastien Borget, articulated their goal of reaching 1 million users in India within the next two years during a recent interview with CoinDesk.

The substantial growth in India’s creator community can be attributed to various initiatives led by The Sandbox and its Indian venture, BharatBox. This initiative is partially backed by CoinDCX, one of India’s leading cryptocurrency exchanges, which has an impressive user base of around 16 million.

“India became the No. 1 overall across all countries … thanks to all the different boot camps and education programs that we’ve run on the ground, either directly with BharatBox or with some of our partners, like CoinDCX,” said Borget.

BharatBox started with an initial capitalization of $1 million, and an additional $200,000 is set to be invested by the fourth quarter, according to BharatBox CEO Karan Keswani. In contrast to The Sandbox’s recent $20 million fundraising at a $1 billion valuation earlier this year, the Indian venture has been designed to be self-sufficient and autonomous, generating its own revenue without the need for further investments, as noted by Borget.

“We’ve proven that India is not just the tech workforce of the world,” Borget emphasized. “We’ve shown that blockchain projects can thrive not only through development but also in the content and entertainment sectors.”

In a notable success, 1,060 avatars inspired by the popular Indian film Jab We Met were sold within just two weeks of their release, demonstrating a successful integration into the Indian cinema industry.

When discussing the broader Web3 market, Borget remarked, “I think we are still not in the bull market.” Despite a resurgence of interest triggered by the approval of spot-crypto exchange-traded funds (ETFs) in the U.S., which have attracted institutional investments, Borget noted that this has not yet translated into increased user adoption, primarily because retail investors are not currently channeling their savings into cryptocurrency.

Nonetheless, there remains a strong interest in Web3 adoption, bolstered by the emergence of high-quality new games and the extensive distribution network of the messaging service, Telegram. Borget also addressed the recent arrest of Telegram CEO Pavel Durov in France, who faces charges including complicity in facilitating illicit transactions and the distribution of child exploitation material on the platform.

“Privacy is a fundamental right, but if an application is being used to commit serious crimes, we cannot remain neutral and not assist the authorities,” Borget stated, emphasizing the importance of ethical responsibility within the digital realm.