Wowtalkies - Ritesh Kant

WowTalkies with Ritesh Kant

Participants:

• Nadja Bester (CEO & Co-founder of AdLunam)

• Ritesh Kant(CEO of wowTalkies)

00:23

Nadja

Hey, Web3 world. This is Nadja Bester from AdLunam and you are listening to The Future of NFTs, the show that looks beyond current NFT use cases and dives into what Non Fungible Token technology is evolving into. All this as seen through the eyes and all by the minds of the absolutely fascinating guest speakers we speak to each week. As for AdLunam, we are building the industry's first Engage to Earn investment platform with a Proof of Attention allocation mechanism. Our investor profiles use dynamic NFTs that allows for allocation fractionalization, a mouthful, but it rhymes. We are especially passionate about the future possibilities that NFTs have to offer. Now, my guest today, very happy to be talking to Ritesh, co-founder of WowTalkies, which really he is here to tell us more about. The idea of fan engagement on Web3 is something that in so many various forms is something I very often talk about.

01:29

Nadja

I think in Web3 we have engagement and really that collaborative spirit as a foundation to so many of the projects out there. It's not just the little cherry on the cake, but it's so much more and so much deeper than that. I'm very excited to be speaking to Ritesh today. He comes from a background of various industries in terms of consulting, product, service oriented businesses that he's been involved with. He has successfully conceptualized and delivered digitally driven business transformation initiatives fortune 100 organizations, as well as startup strategies and project buildouts at emerging organizations. Ritesh really comes from a rich professional corporate startup background. I'm very happy to be talking to you today, Ritesh, about WowTalkies, I think that as I said, it's something that is very close to my heart in terms of understanding how this evolution of people coming together and organizing themselves, how this looks like really at every iteration of this unfolding industry.

02:47

Nadja

In the year that we are in: 2023

03:46

Ritesh

Hey Nadja, thanks for the lovely introduction. Glad to be here. It's a pleasure. We've been wanting to do this for quite a while, but then we are hardly 50 days into the New Year so it's as good a time as any. The New Year is just drowning on us. I have built a lot of production platforms as a part of great teams. Fan engagement on the entertainment side is something that is very close to my heart. Ask me anything about Tom Cruise, I will just be able to rattle it from the top of my heart. Ask me about Harrison Ford. Well, again, I don't need to look at Google for that. Ask me about Game of Thrones. Well, I can write a Wikipedia article if I have the time. Which is why there has been this motivation to do something which brings fans together as a collective mechanism, as a collective, as a community around engaging on entertainment and movies and things that they love imbibe, like, are very passionate about.

05:13

Ritesh

I and my team did something on the fan engagement side for football fans. This was mid of last decade. The property that we conceptualize then is now the largest media property football fans across the globe. We have a bit of experience in doing this. It was like, hey, why not put this into practice and build fan engagement around entertainment? And which is where WowTalkies is born. The idea is that me, you, the AdLunam team and the WowTalkies teams, get together as a community around say, Game of Thrones, As part of interacting with each other and with the community and with the platform incidentally, we also follow an Engage to Earn model. How can I compete in a friendly manner with you Nadja and then proclaim myself to be a super fan of Game of Thrones? Hopefully quicker than you. I'll leave you behind in a respectful, game led, friendly competition kind of a manner.

06:38

Ritesh

This is what we are trying to build and what better place to build it than Web3. I and my co-founders, have been practitioners on the Web2 space for quite a while. But then what? Web3 lends itself to this entire thing around multi-sided networks and I believe social networks and multi-sided networks supply and demand the two sides. In this case, if you just consider the fan engagement piece as an example, fans are one aspect of the network, communities are another. Stakeholders such as entertainers or another platform is another side. It's either an hexagon or an octagon rather than just a quadrilateral, which is and web3 lends itself beautifully to problems that are multi sided because of the self incentivization, transparency, the virtuous positive feedback cycle that it embodies. Yeah, which is why we are doing what we are doing, which is why we're doing it on Web3.

07:51

Ritesh

onate about what we're doing.: 2022

08:45

Nadja

Absolutely. 100% agree with you on having never experienced something of this magnitude to this extent in these times or in these type of times before. I wanted to comment on you saying that you're this Game of Thrones super fan. I'm in Croatia at the moment and I visited Dubrovnik and Split and, they are filming locations where the series was made and I did watch Game of Thrones a couple of seasons, but I binge watch, I think in season one, I binge watch one to six and I never continued watching. Not a super fan by any means. I barely could recognize the filming location, so I felt like it was so lost on me. If only I had been more of a fan, this would have been a much more amazing experience than it was. It's so interesting, this line of thinking about anything from a fan to a super fan, when we talk about, let's say, celebrity culture or movie culture, for example.

09:48

Nadja

since: 2017

11:07

Nadja

Where those who have aligned their personal identity with web3 in some sense, as opposed to only looking at it, I mean, if we take decentralization as a philosophy, some people align themselves with that line of thinking, and therefore, web3 is like a homecoming. You have this concept of mass adoption and everyone's going to get onto Web3 and we know that for most of the world it's not about the technology. They are not going to come because it's web3. We need to offer them something so much more above and beyond that they barely need to know that it's web3. In you building WowTalkies, who were you targeting initially and do you have plans to, let's say, broaden out from that initial target audience? Is it going to be very web3 focused or is it only going to be built on web three, but it could appeal to anyone?

12:12

Ritesh

I think there is a contrarian piece here. You were very correct when you said that decentralization and democracy is our ethos irrespective of the region in the world that we belong to. Autocracy and oligopolies have very limited shelf lives. It's been proven through history. It doesn't need reminding at all. I think from that perspective this is my first web3 bear cycle. But I've been in the bear cycles. From a bear cycle perspective, this is the fifth that I'm encountering. Over the last few years what I've seen in traditional depth which we could give the normal depth to this intense aspect about decentralization, recognition and individual identity. If you look at all the short form video platforms, I believe that those are great examples of people like you and me wanting to build an individual identity of their own. That is why we create videos, we take Instagram shots, and we put up pictures of where we are.

13:44

Ritesh

We are not being narcissistic there. We're just trying to feel happy about what we are doing, presenting our talents, being content creators in some manner and at the same time having this philosophy of democratically sharing with everybody. I firmly believe that this philosophy is ingrained. It is here to stay. Web 2 has led us to discuss where we expect this as a matter of fundamentals. I also believe that well, as in the infrastructure, the web3 infrastructure improves, which it has. I mean if you look at all internet commerce models, commerce follows the infrastructure. It's infrastructure first, then it's the application, then it's commerce and then it's people. It's a chicken and the egg cycle there. Because the infrastructure has evolved and it will continue evolving over a period of time, there will be builders who are zealously creating applications for people to interact with.

15:03

Ritesh

Whether you call those applications a decentralized finance on the content creation side, NFTs, et cetera and as these applications get simpler to use and the infrastructure gets simpler to use, people will not distinguish whether it's a Web2 model or a Web3 model. They will just move. Now for instance, if we were to reapprovably and transparently say that hey guys, here is something that you have do all your fandom here and as part of that monetization is very transparent. It will be foolhardy not to expect people to migrate over. People see value.To finally answer that question, I think we will see a lot of people on the traditional Web2 world moving into reigns that we are building. It will not be, so to say, web3 efficient auto alone, just building for Web Three efficient autos, we will never get to scale.

16:26

Ritesh

We will never be able to do fan engagement or any engagement of any kind. That's not how it works. I'm a great believer that, well, infrastructure, as infrastructure increases, apps come on board, people will see value and as user experience gets simpler, people won't bother whether it's on blockchain or not.

16:49

Nadja

Many good points there and I wish I could dive deeper into each one of them. Something you said that really stood out for me is this idea that web2 is what not only in a negative, rebellious sense, but also a natural evolution, gave way to web3. Because I think there's one narrative where and this is the narrative that understandably so, was pushed very strongly a couple of years ago, that web3 is Robin Hood and web3 is the savior that we are all looking for. It's going to be this complete severe with the web2 world and with the financial industry and we're going to start over quite utopian. It was almost as if you had the very highly utopian minds in one camp and then on the other hand, you had the other narrative of scammers and people come in to just grab and do as much damage as they can to enrich themselves.

17:57

Nadja

Two very extreme points on the spectrum. If we take a step back and look at it a bit more moderately in the day to day evolution of the industry and technology and society, then I think it becomes quite clear that as much as there is, of course, this rebellious element to it, More likely it is as you say, that society has come to this point where an industry like this was able to be born. It's not that we are cutting severing ties with the old. It's really this idea. I mean, this is something that I have been focusing quite strongly on. I'm writing a book, ironically, on creators in the creative economy, but really using Web3. I constantly come across the fact that when I speak to people because of the book, I speak to people who have no idea what Web3 is far more often than I did before because the book comes up in conversation and that leads to the actual initial conversation.

19:09

Nadja

I've noticed that most people have no idea what Web3 even is and they feel very daunted by the concept of it. If you mention a word they've ever heard, I mean, if you mentioned crypto, they know people get rich but they get scammed. If you mention NFTs, they know it's something that they completely cannot understand. It's probably a monkey picture that's digital art and that's the all-round experience that they have with this technology. I've realized this idea of Web 2.5 versus let's dive from Web2 into Web3. It's such a prevalent and necessary conversation that we all should be having because if we want people to start using the technology, the infrastructure that's been built, we shouldn't at the same time place huge barriers between these users and the onboarding that we all know they are going to do at some point.

20:09

Nadja

In building WowTalkies, did you take the approach of if I come onto your platform as a complete newbie, a fan of Game of Thrones it's never too late to start? From there I know that I'm using Web3 in the general sense, but I don't necessarily experience it in the day to day unless it comes to the additional benefits that it offers. Or alternatively, are you requiring users to gain more of understanding about Web3 in order to participate on the platform?

20:50

Ritesh

Yeah, interesting question. I will just delve into the arguments and the excellent argument that you made about this transition from one internet model to the other. The internet is participative and there is also this there will always be this cognitive dissonance, right? We are familiar to what we do irrespective of our demographics. If you ask us to do things in a certain way, which is very different than in this case, it takes time for anybody, even if he or she is an early adopter, to evolve. We will never be able to cut the umbilical cord, so to say, from one internet model to the other, that's not how it's going to happen. What we also need to figure out, and that is something that all the Web3 stakeholders need to get together and figure out our regulations. Now, necessarily from a regulatory perspective, there are some things on the user experience that lend friction and dissonance.

22:04

Ritesh

Ideally speaking from a fan engagement perspective, we are very clear and as I argued earlier, that when you are able to give a great value proposition, people can contribute comments and then in a very decentralized manner without getting kicked out of the platform for things that they don't know best, what they've got kicked out of. They can move up a so called fan mode ladder and figure out as to how they are doing. Rather than being at the mercy of algorithms, people will definitely adopt. I think we will stay for a good period of time also because of regulations, also because of infrastructure where we will likely not be able to say obviate, what is under the hood six to eight months later possibly, yes, it's also a perspective of regulations. For example, in many parts of the world, governments are to say, very sensitive about people using what they define as crypto rather than FPS, might not have anything to do with crypto per se, but still, I mean, which is why they would require a certain amount of diligence to be done on the users, stuff like that.

23:36

Ritesh

So, yeah, the long term vision definitely is that you and I interact with the platform without figuring out as to what's happening under the hood. You and I are participants in the process because the owners take on the platform. We make it super easy for you and me to figure out as to why we reach a certain stage if we have. I like this analogy about emails. Emails, I think, are the first decentralized application. When they started, anybody could create a Gmail account. It was not prohibitive at all. You wouldn't get kicked out of Gmail or your mail. You were there. It is just that. You're not bothered as to where your email is. It's in some server somewhere. It's controlled by Google. Over a period of time, there is this truth and provenance around. Well, there are certain mail conversation. You look at the mail trace and you're able to figure out that, hey, this is how this has transpired over the period. It has. Well, we need to move on. That's the same ease of use.

24:52

Nadja

We will get there slowly but surely. You said something really interesting that when I kind of take a bit of a dive into in terms of web3, is so much about a lack of freedom from, let's say, censorship of information. That's a huge selling point, at least for many in theory, even if it's not necessarily being practiced as yet. But I'm very curious. If you think about the idea that so much of web2 is platform censorship, and this might because there are terms and conditions, or it might because the algorithms are in a certain way designed to promote certain interactions in certain ways at certain times, et cetera. So those two considerations being considered. At the same time, using an example, because I want to kind of go into the fan aspect more, if about the recent Hobbit Harry Potter game that's been released.

26:07

Nadja

And JK. Rowling has for quite some time now been highly criticized by the trans community because she's come out as very transphobic and now people are kind of rallying together to boycott the game in order to promote the trans community. This for me is an example of just a fan base where there can be a huge schism and as a platform that engages with fans and you have this philosophy of not censoring information and not using algorithms to benefit the platform as opposed to the user? How do you see web3 navigate these waters? Where's the limit? Where's the limit where you say these are the platform terms and conditions and these are things that cannot be posted on there versus saying what, this is completely decentralized. So where do you draw the line?

27:12

Ritesh

It's a difficult question and a very interesting one as well. I would be amazed if somebody had a straight answer for this. Nevertheless, I think when we think about fan engagement and fans talking about what they espouse so I was saying, we are still building and we don't claim to have all the answers of how we will face such circumstances of being empathetic to a certain cause, but at the same time not being looked as being prohibitive or autocratic and uncommonly like. I'm a firm believer that ultimately it is the collective wisdom of the crowd that will rule. We will push and prod. Essentially, well, in many manners we see that in daily practice, right? Whoever shouts the loudest prevails a lot of times and that's the way of the world. We need to accept it. We as a team, we will diligently, push and prod from a perspective of saying that, hey, for example, if there was something that was racial vitriol or something that was transphobic, something that is not accepted as norms of acceptable behavior and the system is decentralized.

29:04

Ritesh

We are hoping and assuming that in a majority of the cases the community will have the power and the bear with all to just say that, hey, guys, enough is enough. It is an engaged one model. Everything is manifested as far as your scores are concerned. These are the negative consequences that you have to be moderated by the community. People are community moderators. Communities are community moderators that are elected by the people. That should take care of such extreme cases. If it does not, so sure as to how we would handle it. I would like to think that if vitriol crosses a line, then in which case we might need to prod the community moderators to intervene, whatever that means. In cases where we think that there are these causes that we need to be empathetic about, we will be community moderators ourselves. We will create those community groups and invite people and say that hey, listen, here's something that we should be doing.

30:22

Ritesh

For example, there is this devastation in Turkey. Well, we will take the initiative and saying that well, let's create while it is nothing related to fan engagement at all, but we will create a correlated to say that hey, this movie was filmed in Turkey. These are the locations there has been this devastation in this country, so let's get together and do something about it. That's the broad philosophy that we will follow. I think we will know more than the rubber hit the road.

30:56

Nadja

But I love this idea of community mobilization as something that you are able to do because of the way that you are building the community in general. People know that this is a space where they're able to come to receive xyz, that these are the things that they want, that makes them feel happy, that makes them feel a sense of belonging because this is part of their identity. To interject this daily experience and especially considering the Engage to Earn model which AdLunam has as well. We know that people will come onto the platform on an almost daily basis because if you are wanting to engage and in our case get your engagement score up so that you are able to get allocation in public sales, then we know that they will be there on a daily basis. Which means that as a platform you have a certain amount of influence that you are able to direct in many different directions.

32:10

Nadja

This idea of being able to mobilize a community because you already have the community, I think that's something that's very powerful and definitely something that is not spoken about enough. Because in web3 we very often talk about the community as everything but what does it mean on a day to day, very practical, very tangible, but at the same time also evolutionary basis. Where is this taking the very concept of human relationships in a professional, in a semiprofessional, in a personal context because it is changing the way that people think, it's changing the way that people interact. It's not just a fad or a trend that comes and goes but it really changes fabric of society in a sense because we cannot go back from here. Very interesting to take that line of thought and ask you what is your approach and your philosophy to community as we talk about it in web3, a large group of people generally using a platform that uses web3 technologies such as wowTalkies, what is the best approach to take?

33:33

Nadja

Because there's on the one hand the Hype cycle and as long as you are hyped up, that's great and you're going to get all the investors but it's very often completely unsustainable. Many of these Hyped projects one hit wonders and sometimes they even make off with the cash. It's not necessarily that Hype means utility and this is something that I think this bear market has again drove home. You are building the wowTalkies community and also just thinking about Web3 building in terms of community in general, what do you think is the best approach for projects to take to get these, I’ll call them loyal users as an umbrella term?

34:23

Ritesh

Yeah, I think you raised many interesting points but let me step back a bit. I think a very interesting point that you made was from a perspective of web3 changing societal behaviors. I think the biggest contribution of web3 to our living beings, I mean living being not as a known but we are living beings as a society. I think Web3 will be a harbinger to societal change with its inherent community, building decentralization with everybody being in charge of their behavior, so to say, and being in charge of the destiny, being able to create content, being able to monetize, and being able to control their identity. Whatever I do over a period of time becomes a part of my decentralized identity for anybody to see. I can't masquerade as somebody else on Twitter while I'm somebody else completely different in real life.

35:35

Ritesh

I think over a period of time web3 will be a great agent for society change. I'm a firm believer in that. I think from a project perspective there were two questions that he brought up how does a project create tangible value? A tangible value might not be in terms of tangible value, might not just be in terms of revenue but then how can a project such as ours create tangible value? That can be measured for anybody who is a stakeholder. Stakeholder can be invested as well. I look at the problem in a couple of ways so I think an audience is us looking at a stage and imbibing whatever is being given on the stage whereas the community is all of us sitting together in a circle over chairs and imbibing what each other has to say. I think in some manner as a platform if you're able to demonstrate that communities have been built and the norm of building the community is hey, are we sitting across each other?

36:49

Ritesh

We have affinity towards each other, towards the community first and then toward the celebrity and entertainment cause that they are espousing. Which is where I think there will be actual proof of the pudding in the community building aspects. How do we measure them? Those could be measured and engaged on fundamental things around how much is a daily active usage base, what is the activity level of users? You could use a lot of web2 measurements and you can seamlessly use them and use them in this fundamental as well. If we do it well then in which case the harder fundamentals such as revenue, total value locked, will follow. It's very logical. It's happened before, it will happen again from a perspective. The second part of the question was well how do we get this going? From our experience in building and in building products with network effects and also in our daily life using products that have network effects I firmly believe that it is a supply side that is more important than the demand side.

38:28

Ritesh

I for once will congregate to Amazon or somebody that does commerce delivery, as a customer on the demand side, if there is a feat of supply options that I like on the supply side, right? If I were the network, if I were the platform, then I need to solve the supply side question first. I think from that perspective, we will try and solve the supply side fundamentals first. So what do we do there? Maybe we will create communities of our own. We will regurgitate those communities. We will go out and talk to entertainers and say hey, listen, we are trying to do this. This is the advantage that you get, would you want to attach or sell it to the cause? In many manners we might end up creating some content in order to obviate the cold start problem at the beginning.

39:48

Ritesh

If we are able to solve the supply side question, I think then the demand side question will solve itself. That's what I firmly believe in.

40:01

Nadja

Yes, interesting times because I think we are really, as you said, standing on the precipice of a fundamental shift in thinking and consciousness almost around how businesses utilize technology. I think that's something that is completely not as apparent to the general population because you really have to stand in the industry, especially if you are in an industry that's already looking to web3. It might be a component of your job. Although we now see that. I mean, salesforce for example, has a person dedicated to entities and shopify does. You really see brands incorporating this idea around web3 into their everyday businesses. Especially if you are fully immersed in web3. I mean, if I take myself as an example, we talk to an endless amount of projects at AdLunam. I speak to people like you on podcast and through my book, I'm speaking to a lot of people.

41:15

Nadja

I feel like I have so many kind of entry points into different layers and levels of thinking about web3 as the next xyz. What's so apparent is how deeply entrenched you need to be to understand the seismic shifts that are happening right now. I always feel so privileged to be able to see this because it's almost like you walk outside in the sun and you are just like everybody else, but only you know that you just won the lottery. That kind of feeling. It's a very privileged feeling to have because I see the way that things are going and I know kind of where they are going to based on what I'm seeing. At the same time, it's a very difficult industry to be in because as you were saying earlier to someone, you mentioned the word NFT and all of a sudden that cognitive dissonance completely sets in and you can't talk to them any further because now they know nothing about what you're saying and it's completely not understandable.

42:23

Nadja

I would love to hear why are you here now? What led you in your journey, in your trajectory personally, professionally, that at this time, this is the industry that you are in and this is the solution that you are building? Why the conviction?

42:44

Ritesh

At the beginning of the conversation inveterate movie fan love building and that is the same I can speak for my co-founders as well they share the same philosophy as me. They will give you the same answer. Let me step back a bit. We’re always on the consulting side and we consulted for a lot of people enterprises across the globe on their social media strategies, what they should do on the mobile it was called Smack SMAC social mobile analytics and cloud and we build great businesses but for other enterprise and not for ourselves. Then, as I mentioned, we started working for this project, which was for football fans, which is when we realize the sheer amount of when we are a part of social media, we are in it more from a vicarious perspective. We know there is something lacking, but then at the same time, hey, we are here.

44:09

Ritesh

somewhere in the late: 2020

45:39

Ritesh

We started building on web2 in when in bear market, our investors, I mean we have angel investment. They were like what's happened? Have you flipped your lid? There are the negative connotations around anything that is related to crypto, website, et cetera the market is bad, macroeconomic conditions are bad and then you are trying to do something that is not mainstream anymore. Not anymore is not the right word. That's not mainstream at this point of time. Were faced with the question that hey, if we don't start doing it then in which case and wait for the market to solve itself, we would never do it. Which is why we said we jumped headlong and said that we will swim to our best, we'll cross the bridge when we come to it. Yeah, this is the only way, this is the right way to do it.

46:46

Nadja

Yeah, I mean, hats off to you that you continue building because I think for me this was so palpable, so I've been consulting with back then, we didn't call it Web3, but the blockchain crypto startup world, I mean, for many years now and have worked with different startups in different capacities. I also have of course seen the difference between a bear market complete hibernation of anyone who can't get a quick fix. If I can't raise funds now, then, well, I'll wait until the bull market and it's completely different caliber. Not to say that startups can function without funding, but sometimes as a founder, you are almost forced to bootstrap if you are going to build a certain product, a certain company at a certain time. I know how difficult it is because we work as an investment platform, we work with projects that everyone's waiting to launch in the bull market, but there's so much at the back of the launch in terms of building.

48:04

Nadja

What is quite incredible is where previously you only needed an idea and that would be enough to get your funding. That was the insane craziness of the time. This happens every so often when the market is at its best worst, because it really is in the eye of the beholder, whether it's actually so good in that sense, everyone is there. When it comes to the bear market and well, now there's no funding coming in, it's only you and time. Are you going to use this time to build something that you can show the world or are you going to use this time to wait for better times? So, very interesting to kind of hear from your perspective as well, coming in from a different industry but taking the same approach and going, no, I believe in this, but now is not the time. However, let's do the other things in the meantime.

49:00

Nadja

To close off any final words and also please tell us where to reach you. Where are you most active on a daily basis if people want to follow you?

49:12

Ritesh

So, I'm reasonably active on LinkedIn. I juggle my social apps, WhatsApp. Reasonably active on Telegram as well. Don't do a lot of tweeting, would love to, but then there is only so much time in a day, so most of the time is spent in building and solving problems. Don't get a lot of time to tweet, so to say. Do reach out to me on Twitter, It's RiteshKant3. That's my Twitter handle. That's my Telegram handle as well. Ritesh Kant, Is my username on LinkedIn? Just on your question, not question, not the right projection in narration we debated long and hard when we said that hey, let's start building on web3. We had this great idea and we had built on web2. We knew as to what were the mistakes that we were doing and we should not repeat on the directory.

50:18

Ritesh

We had this great debate on whether we should raise on the idea or we should bootstrap a bit more and raise with the minimum within MVP. All of us co-founders after the end of the debate homogeneously decided that we would be confident raising more when we have an MVP and that is the amount of confidence that we will be able to give to investors. So that mattered more to us. I mean we've been in the sales and consulting profession, we’re fairly confident and okay to raise funds on an idea that we've done that. We said that, hey, we will have more confidence to say that, well, the drawbacks that we thought were on web2 are solved in web3 to this extent. In the bear market, we'll be able to give that confidence to the investor as well, which is why we built and did not visit them in India.

51:20

Ritesh

Yes, I think as concluding remarks, web3 is a great agent of societal change. Market cycles will come and go. Speculation of any kind is healthy because it is with speculation that people build and investment comes in and people build more. While speculation has this negative connotation around people profiting, et cetera, but not really. I think speculators need to be revered, eulogized and yeah, wherever there are these multi sided networks as a solution to a problem, go ahead, just build on web3 with a reasonable modicum of confidence. I will say that's the attribute of success.

52:20

Nadja

Well, thank you so much. I think that is the perfect way to conclude today's conversation. Absolutely lovely to have spent this time with you. I think that so much of what you are saying is really the zeitgeist of the time and it's amazing to be able to have this conversation and to know that all over the industry and society this is taking place and it's only really through conversations like this that it becomes so much more apparent. So thank you so much. It was amazing to connect with you and I look forward to seeing what is going to happen with wowTalkies in the coming months and in the coming years. This is really just the beginning and there's so much room for so much more and in so many different directions. So let's see how it goes. Thank you. Ritesh. Yeah, lovely to connect.

53:13

Ritesh

A pleasure. Thanks for having me over. This was wonderful. I have not spoken so much about society and societal change in philosophy for a long period of time, we just talk about, this is what we are building, and this is why we're building. This is the features, this is what we see as traction, and this is what we will be six months online. We talk hard facts and figures. So this was a lovely combination.

53:40

Nadja

No, I agree. It's so important to take a step back and to really just from a Meta point of view, reflect on where you are, why you're there and where you're going. So it was amazing. So, yeah, looking forward to the next time. And whereabouts, where are you based? Where are you now?

53:58

Ritesh

We are based out of India, southern part of India, place called Chennai.

54:02

Nadja

Okay. I know Chennai, I've been to Chennai. So it's quite late for you already. I'm going to wish you a good evening then. Cheers.

54:14

Ritesh

Cheers.

54:15

Nadja

Bye. Bye.