Trading in cricket NFTs: Interview with Ankit Wadhwa, Co-founder and CEO of Rario

By Puja Sharma

Digital collectible platform Rario allows cricket fans to collect and trade officially licensed cricket moments on the blockchain, represented as a non-fungible token (NFT). Having Polygon Studios and Animoca as partners, Rario is built on the Polygon Network by a top-notch team of Indian founders and is backed by reputed investors such as Kingsway Capital and Presight Capital. Rario enables fans to engage as a community and invest in tangible sporting moments. It allows the fan to ‘own’ a piece of sports history.

Ankit Wadhwa, Co-founder and CEO of Rario, worked with McKinsey before starting his entrepreneurial journey and has built, scaled, and exited the e-commerce platform Wadi. Wadi competed with Amazon (souq) in the middle east as the second-largest player and is now a part of Carrefour (Middle East), the 8th largest retailer in the World by revenue. With his depth of expertise and proven track record, Ankit at present is building Rario, the world’s first officially licensed cricket NFT platform.

IBS Intelligence interacted with Wadhwa, to understand how cricket fans in India can now buy, sell and trade cricket NFTs.

What was the idea behind creating Rario?

Cricket is the world’s second most popular sport, with over 200 million fans and followers worldwide. In this modern technological era of Web3 where technology is penetrating our daily lives, there emanates an exciting proposition to connect fans and cricket stars. A step ahead from the era of trading cards and autographs… an era of democratizing the game and giving the fans a wholesome experience. This scenario paved the way for the development of NFTs in cricket.

We envisage cricket NFTs ushering in a whole new digital fanbase for cricket in the coming years, where fans will be able to participate in exciting ways – be it games, applications, or interactions with cricket stars in the Rario Cricket Metaverse. Fans will be closer to their heroes than ever before thanks to the officially licensed NFTs.

How can one own cricket NFTs at the firm?

Rario is the world’s first officially licensed digital collectibles marketplace for cricket NFTs which is safe, secure, and user-friendly. Rario’s smart contracts have been audited by Holborn, which is a leading smart contract auditing firm that makes it a trustworthy platform for transactions.

A user can purchase Rario NFTs either through backdrops that are scheduled on regular intervals by cryptocurrencies or credit/debit cards or the marketplace via cryptocurrencies such as USDT, USDC, or DAI on polygon chain via any wallet. Soon, we will be enabling credit/debit card transactions in the marketplace.

Prioritizing the seamless one-stop solution to purchase Cricket NFTs, Rario’s Marketplace ensures the end-to-end privacy of the personal and non-personal data of buyers and sellers and the transactional security of buying-selling.

What is your growth strategy for the next couple of years?

Rario aims to create a completely digital economy for cricket which brings in the cricketers from the grass route to the international level together. We’re in the process of forming partnerships with cricket boards, leagues, franchises, and players all over the world. We are also partnering with the other stakeholders from the cricket ecosystem such as fan clubs, sports academies, media platforms, etc.

So far, we have announced partnerships with four global leagues including CPL, LPL, T10 League, and LLC, and over 25+ player partnerships which include the likes of the legendary Virender Sehwag and Zaheer Khan to the rising female stars Smriti Mandhana and Shafali Verma to the best from each country as Aaron Finch, Jason Holder, Rashid Khan, Quinton De Kock, Rishabh Pant, M Siraj, Ruturaj Gaikwad and many more.

The strategy of growth is simple, where we partner with the maximum stakeholders in the cricket ecosystem and offer a comprehensive experience to our fans where they can own the NFTs of our partners which will act as a collectible or a gate pass to Rario Club which will open the doors for endless possibilities. Some of these possibilities include getting access to retrievers, free-to-play games, play-to-earn games, fantasy games, interaction with the stars, getting free match passes, and much more.

Rario will usher in a brand new era of fandom and connection to the sport in the next few years. This is the inner join between Fans and Cricketers that Rario is striving for.

What are a few of the important points to keep in mind while investing in NFTs?

Every Guru says that we should follow the value-based investing model with the asset having the potential for continued growth. The same rule applies while purchasing NFTs, but there are certain points one must keep in mind.

Rario NFTs are designed to be useful, not merely as collectible but can also be utilized in the ‘Rarioverse’ for a variety of purposes as mentioned earlier. Let’s talk a bit about the minds behind Rario. Rario was created by a group of seasoned entrepreneurs with Ivy League educations and a proven track record in the business world with businesses worth over $200m. To top it off, renowned financial groups such as Foresight Capital and Kingsway Capital have funded the initiative.

What are the challenges related to NFTs in India? How are you educating people on that?

India is a land of diverse opinions with a billion minds. The biggest problem in India is that people still generalize NFTs with cryptocurrencies. As there is a digital divide resulting in the dearth of awareness on how to identify the correct NFT initiatives and how they work, NFTs are seen as a sign of volatility.

At Rario, we are taking the steps to educate the masses. Our goal is to educate people on the differences between cryptocurrencies and NFTs, as well as the differences between utility-based NFTs and digital art-based NFTs.

We’re connecting with communities and employing the correct combination of influencers to create not only instructive but also engaging material for our target audience. Rario aims to create an environment of trust and value in the NFT space in the long run.

Where do you see this sector in the next five years?

At Rario we believe that In the next five years, we expect fandom to migrate to the digital space, and NFTs will play a crucial role in this transition because these fandoms have not been monetized in the digital world.

Our goal is to build a fully digital cricket economy where fans can interact and experience true fandom in a group setting. At Rario We’ve discovered how to solve the gap in the market for bringing cricket products (NFTs) to the digital sphere and using blockchain to ensure immortal authenticity.