To Bollywood and Beyond

Business magnate Kishore Samtani’s love for Indian cinema has entered another dimension. He talks about his new Web3 project, Bollyverse, and how he plans to take it global

- Tara Sobti

When Kishore Samtani was a young boy living in Mumbai, the world’s most prolific centre for film production, the influence of Bollywood was all around him. The creative energy of the industry excited Samtani, and the magic of theatre and the possibilities of the worlds that could be created would inspire him as an adult to launch a new project to bring his beloved Bollywood into the Web3 era.

In March, Samtani launched Bollyverse, a one-stop source of entertainment for all Bollywood lovers in the metaverse, meeting a need in the space he felt was unfulfilled. “Indian representation is important. Now, everyone will get to experience the richness of Indian culture in the metaverse,” he says from New York in July, where he was attending NFT NYC, a Web3 symposium. In the Bollyverse, users can attend movie award shows and concerts from the comfort of their own homes, play virtual reality games with stars, buy from India’s biggest designer brands, and experience the glitzy world of Bollywood by interacting with celebrity avatars.