OneRare startup introduces Foodverse

If you haven’t been able to digest the word ‘metaverse’ yet, fret not. An easier, perhaps even tastier, pill is in the making. To make the blockchain world accessible to a larger audience, Supreet Raju and Gaurav Gupta have taken a very familiar, comforting approach – that of food. The husband-wife duo co-founded the New Delhi-based start-up OneRare, and are building the world’s first food metaverse or ‘Foodverse,’ which brings together the elements of NFTs, food and gaming on the blockchain ecosystem. They began working on it in 2021.
“Cooking, or anything to do with food, is a creative outlet and people have taken to cooking during the pandemic like never before. They have also binge-watched television shows about food. We wanted to use the idea of food to make this tech experience easier for people,” says Raju, a design graduate from the National Institute of Fashion Technology (NIFT). Gupta, on the other hand, is an engineer.

DECODING FOODVERSE
The concept of Foodverse offers a global outreach for celebrity chefs, restaurants and food brands for the first time through NFTs. When a chef or a restaurant comes on board, their virtual dishes are introduced into game-play.
Take the example of Mumbai-based chef Saransh Goila, one of the first chefs to be part of the game. He will share his recipes, including the famous Goila’s Butter Chicken. The other is Urban Platter, a homegrown e-store that will offer its ingredients in Foodverse. Zorawar Kalra’s Massive Restaurants, too, opens its first outlet in Metaverse, beginning with the popular Farzi Café.

On the international list, Indonesian chefs Reynold and Arnold Poernomo – owners of family business KOI Dessert Bar in Indonesia – and Chef Anthony Sarpong from Ghana who runs Anthony’s in Düsseldorf, Germany are part of this game-play. 

CARE FOR SOME BUTTER CHICKEN?
“Today, as an Indian chef, I know my audience but with the metaverse, one can dream further as this outreach is not restricted to a certain pin code or a particular country. All over the world, restaurants and food brands are announcing the launch of NFTs and leasing them in Metaverse. There are solid takers for them. You are building brand equity which is relevant to the future, as we will be spending a lot more time in the metaverse,” says Goila.


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