Creators in India are taking baby steps to explore opportunities that come with creating their own NFTs. However, in India, it's becoming more than just a new monetisation tool to give added, personalised access to fans
TV host and actor Vishal Malhotra has collaborated with artist Ishita Banerjee to release Non-Fungible Tokens (NFTs)
In January 2022, Singapore-based Chinese influencer Yuqing Irene sold an NFT (non-fungible token) pack for close to $5.5 million. Last year another Polish influencer, who goes by the name Martirenti on Instagram, sold an NFT for close to $250,000. This tokenisation paradigm is now hitting India as well, with influencers and content creators moving past likes, shares, and comments.
NFTs are making way to provide platform-independent monetisation options for Indian creators and influencers who are now looking beyond collaborations and paid partnerships. Thanks to blockchains, they are putting a price tag on bits and pieces of their content and also immortalising it in the process.
Financial influencer Sharan Hegde, for instance, was one of the first movers in the space. He came up with an NFT which was a five-second animated art of him doing his signature outro, and put it on auction. While the base price of the exclusive digital token was around Rs 700, it was sold to the highest bidder at Rs 65,000.
Hedge’s aim was to mostly educate his followers about NFTs and explain how it is simply not an artwork that can be saved in the gallery as a screenshot.
“I did this to help millions of Indians to educate themselves on the applications of NFTs. In India, the party is just getting started where the celebrities are launching their exclusive NFTs. Likewise, content creators can also create their own NFTs to create digital assets for their followers,” he tells Storyboard18.