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Tag: Dhruv Saxena

  • Fantico names Nic Watt as their new CEO

    Fantico names Nic Watt as their new CEO

    Mumbai: Nic Watt has been onboarded as the new CEO of Vistas Media Capital’s Fantico. Fantico is India’s first curated celebrity and fan engagement platform that was the first to feature collectibles of movie stars, artists, performers, cinema, and sports stars among other unique memorabilia. Since then, Fantico has also ventured into custom metaverse experiences and games.

    Nic Watt has spent more than 20 years working in the video game and blockchain industries. He joined Fantico to focus on his top-level vision for the company’s product direction, people, and technology.

    Prior to this, Watt held positions at Immutable as head of product & innovation, at Riot Games as lead user experience designer, and formed Nnooo, a video games startup.

    Co-founder Abhayanand Singh states, “Fantico is the outcome of a collaboration between media and entertainment  and the blockchain sector. With Fantico we aspire to build close relationships between fans, brands, and celebrities to create a flourishing culture in India along with a robust creator economy. With Nic as the new CEO, we hope to elevate the company to newer heights.”

    Co-founder Dhruv Saxena added, “Fantico is focussed on creating a new medium of entertainment and engagement. Nic has great experience with traditional and web3 games, which makes it fun to build towards our common vision.”

    “Since the time I have been working with Fantico, I believe the platform to be focused on building a unique place for audiences globally. We want it to be a place where people can easily transact with each other and gain gamified benefits while playing games. In addition to this, Fantico looks forward to launching virtual reality spaces that are customizable and provide utility right back to the rest of the users. We wish it to be a fun, social place where people can socialise and hang out with each other and interact with brands and IP via games and experiences. This is a very exciting time to be in the NFT space and with a great time around me, we are sure to make it even more exciting for users,” commented Watt.

    Nic continues, “The core of Fantico is the ‘Play to Earn’ phenomenon where unique elements that blockchain provides tie back into people’s daily lives. We plan to build upon the Play to Earn experiments I was running at Immutable. We are very excited to blur the lines between real-world engagement via payment platforms and brands with digital engagement via games, experiences, and social spaces.”

    Nic is known to be instrumental in creating and prototyping Play to Earn systems at Immutable where their first experiment saw people in Brazil and Russia earning more than the countries’ monthly national average. With Fantico, Nic hopes to better comprehend the wants and needs of people in India, the Middle East, and Africa.

  • GUEST ARTICLE: How web 3.0 can take full advantage of streaming’s potential making it accessible to all users

    GUEST ARTICLE: How web 3.0 can take full advantage of streaming’s potential making it accessible to all users

    Mumbai: Web3 promises to be the renaissance for how we use internet services. It is fundamentally an idea for a more open, decentralised, and secure internet, governed by anti-monopoly and pro-privacy norms. Naturally, the scale and allure of OTT services’ revenue and seemingly insatiable demand make it a prime industry to attempt to ‘disrupt’. The proposition boils down to ‘what value addition does this new technology and ownership structure bring’. It’s an idea we have experimented with for a few years now being on both 1.0 and 2.0 versions of the web.

    Web3 splitting the pie

    There are broadly three models that can exist at scale with web3 characteristics—one, where users are owners [I own a piece of Netflix and I watch it], two, where creators are owners [the studios or the producers or the individuals], and three, where ownership is split between creators, users, and intermediaries [marketers, platforms, other intermediaries, etc.]. Depending on the market this hypothetical business operates in, some of the business models become viable based on the negotiable split amongst these many stakeholders.

    Cutting the middlemen

    The promise of web3 essentially posits ‘cutting the middlemen’ who supposedly ‘do not add value to the flow of creation to consumption, or at least reduce their ‘cut’. “Hey, why is the app store taking 30 per cent?” and “Wait, XYZ label makes millions of dollars off her song, but my favourite artist lives in a rented house?” are the kinds of questions that can be approached two ways. First, since the relationship between creator and consumer is paramount, and since the audience makes someone famous by consuming created content, the value should primarily be distributed between these two.

    Second, stars and hits are made, not born. So, the backers, marketers, technology developers, and distributors (who work thanklessly behind the stage, risking their time and money) deserve a large part of the credit (aka value).

    Therefore, the model of web3 works well for already established creators who can rely on fanfare and loyalty to create subsequent work. However, they will have to choose between their audience’s capital or the existing pool of professional backers. They do acknowledge that the former carrier risks additional work in raising capital, but with the benefit of doing it on their own terms.

    For the new and upcoming creators, it offers them better terms, but at the risk of losing mainstream system support that has proven its success so far.

    Race to the start

    There is now an increasing list of examples of creators across movies, music, social media content, and TV experimenting with the web3 path, which has led to a crop of new web3-only services. Even incumbent studios, distributors, and platforms are making investments in web3 businesses. Following sufficient examples, existing incumbents will further adapt to offering web3-based models as well.

    The fact remains that the entertainment industry overall has very clear risk-reward profiles. If creators take the risk simultaneously with their hopeful audience, they can all potentially gain from it, but will then be on opposite sides of the table. And to create what we deem “hits,” large-scale distribution is still a professional industry, the providers of which will always demand a high fee for their services.

    The web3 model’s adoption will thus grow at the rate that the creators are willing to take it—and help create more stars and hits than the “industry” has allowed since it offers an alternative path to grow. To the end audience, for any type of content, the key criteria remain quality, price, and on-demand. Adding the proposition of being an earning shareholder makes the deal sweeter depending on the potential earnings. What could eventually emerge is a model where audiences contribute to a diversified pool of creators of their choice, while creators will choose who provides intermediary services to them. Some may argue that this is not too different from existing models, but the creatives are pathbreakers by nature.

    The author of the article is Vistas Media Capital & Fantico chief strategy officer Dhruv Saxena.