India's Flipkart & Polygon partner to build blockchain-e-commerce COE

Earlier this year, Flipkart announced Flipkart Labs, the innovation wing, to incubate various solutions to bring innovation to the e-commerce scene in India. With Labs, Flipkart ventured into Web3 and metaverse commerce to explore NFTs, virtual immersive stores, and other blockchain-related use cases. Since then, Flipkart has launched FireDrops, an easy-to-use NFT platform for brands to explore new horizons of community building and pivot the value of NFTs around utilities, Flipkart and Polygon said in a joint press release.

“The partnership brings expertise from the world of e-commerce and Blockchain and lays the foundation for innovation at a protocol, platform, and product level for decentralised e-commerce in India, especially through brand collaborations and initiatives like 3D storefronts, novel NFT drop mechanisms, trustless standards for commerce, on-chain loyalty, and play-to-earn experiences. We look forward to continuing our work with Polygon and adding value to the e-commerce ecosystem by creating opportunities for innovative interactions with customers,” said Naren Ravula, VP, head of product strategy at Flipkart and head of Flipkart Labs.

“We are excited to partner with Flipkart to create the Centre of Excellence. Polygon’s mission is to bring the next billion users to Web3 and this partnership will pioneer research and development at the intersection of Web3 and experiential retail which will advance adoption and impact in India and across the world. We see the blockchain-e-commerce centre of excellence as an engine for the evolution of e-commerce in the years to come,” said Sandeep Nailwal, co-founder of Polygon.

During the festive sale, Flipkart also partnered with eDAO to launch a virtual shopping experience in the metaverse called Flipverse. Flipverse enabled brands to organise unique product launches and create engaging experiences for users within a hyper-realistic, game-like environment.

Fibre2Fashion News Desk (DP)