Mumbai: Nic Watt has been onboarded as the new CEO of Vistas Media Capital’s Fantico. Fantico is India’s first curated celebrity and fan engagement platform that was the first to feature collectibles of movie stars, artists, performers, cinema, and sports stars among other unique memorabilia. Since then, Fantico has also ventured into custom metaverse experiences and games.
Nic Watt has spent more than 20 years working in the video game and blockchain industries. He joined Fantico to focus on his top-level vision for the company’s product direction, people, and technology.
Prior to this, Watt held positions at Immutable as head of product & innovation, at Riot Games as lead user experience designer, and formed Nnooo, a video games startup.
Co-founder Abhayanand Singh states, "Fantico is the outcome of a collaboration between media and entertainment and the blockchain sector. With Fantico we aspire to build close relationships between fans, brands, and celebrities to create a flourishing culture in India along with a robust creator economy. With Nic as the new CEO, we hope to elevate the company to newer heights."
Co-founder Dhruv Saxena added, “Fantico is focussed on creating a new medium of entertainment and engagement. Nic has great experience with traditional and web3 games, which makes it fun to build towards our common vision.”
“Since the time I have been working with Fantico, I believe the platform to be focused on building a unique place for audiences globally. We want it to be a place where people can easily transact with each other and gain gamified benefits while playing games. In addition to this, Fantico looks forward to launching virtual reality spaces that are customizable and provide utility right back to the rest of the users. We wish it to be a fun, social place where people can socialise and hang out with each other and interact with brands and IP via games and experiences. This is a very exciting time to be in the NFT space and with a great time around me, we are sure to make it even more exciting for users,” commented Watt.
Nic continues, “The core of Fantico is the ‘Play to Earn’ phenomenon where unique elements that blockchain provides tie back into people's daily lives. We plan to build upon the Play to Earn experiments I was running at Immutable. We are very excited to blur the lines between real-world engagement via payment platforms and brands with digital engagement via games, experiences, and social spaces.”
Nic is known to be instrumental in creating and prototyping Play to Earn systems at Immutable where their first experiment saw people in Brazil and Russia earning more than the countries’ monthly national average. With Fantico, Nic hopes to better comprehend the wants and needs of people in India, the Middle East, and Africa.
