Sequoia India’s Shailesh Lakhani explains the secrets of investing in Web3

The metaverse genie is out of the box. With rising consumer interest in cryptocurrencies, NFTs, and tokens, communities across the globe are busy identifying and solving the mysteries of the metaverse universe.

In less than two years, since the Supreme Court ban was lifted in India, there's over 25 million people who purchase cryptocurrencies, which is roughly about half the number of people who own stocks, or the number of brokerage accounts.

On Day 1 of YourStory’s Metaverse Summit 2022, Sequoia India MD Shailesh Lakhani shared his thoughts on why he finds The metaverse and Web3 interesting and how he looks at the future. 

“It may be that there's so much space on the metaverse that you don't need to own anything. So these structures are very new and still forming. But we're spending a lot of time just playing around and seeing what people are doing in these areas,” said Shailesh.

Why investors are excited about metaverse

With rising consumer interest in cryptocurrencies and NFTS, it is more interesting to see the amount of entrepreneurship around it. As people have started to buy cryptocurrencies, they start to want to learn more and want to actually build on them. Also, just how the decentralised nature gives users far more control over their digital lives and how this is the fundamental tenant of cryptocurrencies and blockchains is exciting to see.

Excitement around NFTs

Shailesh emphasises that if one had some sort of limited amount of goods, let's say memberships to a club or memberships to a particular type of society, NFTS could give them a way of making that something validated and make it something that if they were to be traded in the future, one could still participate in the growth of that ecosystem.

“We're particularly bullish around NF T's and how people have adopted them in a ton of different applications. And we expect that in the years to come, we'll all own many, many different NF T's,” he added. 

Creativity around tokens

A token is a digital asset. It can mean different things on different projects. In some projects, a token is like a key. It lets you get inside and use that project. In other projects, a token is a form of payment.

“Although there's lots of regulatory uncertainty and how that actually plays out, but tokens are a form of ownership or access to a community, what they enable you to do is still programmatically define what that means, unlike the shares or debt to a company. So people are getting very creative about what you can do with them,” said Shailesh.

Advice to startups

Every startup needs to decide what works best for itself. There are some ideas that are so powerful, and some founding teams with such credibility and charisma that they can raise money for anything. 

“There are some people who can raise money without even having a plan in place just based on who they are. But for most folks some visibility of what they're going to build, whether it be a plan, a prototype, or even a product in production, helps a lot when raising money,” he concludes.

To join The Metaverse Summit login here or visit the website.