Maharashtra-based premium property developer, House of Hiranandani, on Wednesday launched India’s first real estate-themed non-fungible token (NFT) collection, featuring iconic building designs from its engineers, in a rich tribute to their outstanding work.
It is the first real estate developer in India to foray into NFTs and Web 3.0 technology.
The limited-edition NFT collection is titled ‘DreamVerse–Engineering Your Dreams’.
The NFTs will be minted on the Polygon (MATIC) blockchain, co-founded by Sandeep Nailwal, a Delhi-born software developer settled in Dubai.
House of Hiranandani said in a press release that it would use the NFT revenue to set up a fund to assist the underprivileged students at the Bangalore Institute of Technology.
NFTs are a unique token, valued for their exclusive artwork, data, or objects inscribed on it, etc., hence the name non-fungible token.
The developer said the NFT collection is launched on the ‘Koinearth’s ngageN’ NFT platform, which is powered by the Polygon blockchain, to pay tribute to engineers and architects who helped the company create beautiful urban landscapes.
The event came ahead of the Engineers’ Day on Thursday. The collection can be accessed at ngagen.com/houseofhiranandani.
Prashin Jhobalia, vice president of marketing strategy at House of Hiranandani, said, “Our attempt is to motivate these young minds with research-based real estate creations and encourage them to work in a manner that would make a difference to society. Our intention is to make the students and our future engineers self-sufficient and masters in their trade.”
Global NFT Trade
As of May 2022, the global NFT sales were estimated to be about $3 billion, and India is among the top five countries globally with an estimated 1.5 million NFT users. Other Web 3.0 technology, like metaverse, a virtual 3D animated world, also uses NFT to power its activities.
In January 2022, Propy, a US-based crypto company, became the first NFT platform to conduct a real-world real estate transaction using NFTs. Media website TechCrunch founder Michael Arrington sold his Kyiv apartment in a real estate auction through Propy.
NFTs are also used for various blockchain-based games like Axie Infinity. Gamepad, a Singapore-headquartered metaverse and GameFi platform, in a report published in August, said that the NFT gaming market is set to grow to 4.5 billion users globally by 2030.
In a separate report, London-based blockchain analytics firm Elliptic, said that 2 per cent of NFT trades globally are manipulated, and advised people to be careful in NFT transactions.
