India Is Working On The Country’s First Blockchain District

In order to give a further push to all the blockchain-related development taking placing in the country, the government of Indian state of Telangana has signed a memorandum-of-understanding (MoU) with the country’s IT conglomerate Tech Mahindra on developing ‘India’s First Blockchain District’.

The MoU was recently signed after the International Blockchain Congress that took place in Hyderabad last week on August 3rd. As reported by Economic Times India, the Blockchain District will serve as an incubation centre for all the blockchain startups and companies while promoting the development of DLT applications.

The government-funded physical premises will be built and developed in Telangana’s capital city Hyderabad. KT Rama Rao, Telangana’s IT Minister was quoted saying: “Telangana government is proud to pioneer Blockchain District in India. With support from Tech Mahindra, we envision to set a benchmark in providing Blockchain technology solutions and platforms across industries.”

While appreciating the blockchain technology in general, Rao also said: “Transactions made using blockchain are immutable and transparent, so it makes it an ideal candidate for many non-financial use cases in the public sector. This includes healthcare, real estate, insurance, managing land records, managing welfare payments, peer-to-peer energy transactions and other sectors.”

Additionally, Tech Mahindra will be getting all the regulatory and policy backing from the state government to fuel the blockchain development in the city. During the Congress event, Tech Mahindra also announced the launch of its own blockchain project dubbed Eleven01 Protocol which the company says will be a government-compliant platform for developing decentralized application (DApps) which can perform ‘over 10,000 transactions a second’.

Eleven01 Foundation’s chief in India Rama Iyer said: “The protocol will power an entire ecosystem of services for Indian blockchain startups, ranging from advisories, incubators, center for excellences (COEs) and venture funds. With this, early stage blockchain startups will get every kind of support required from a single, cohesive entity.”

Telangana and its neighboring state of Andhra Pradesh have been quite active in pushing blockchain developments as a part of their government reforms. Last year, Andhra Pradesh proposed using blockchain technology for land registries to solve the issue of land disputes in the future.

Earlier this year, India’s top policy-making body - The National Institute of Transforming India (NITI Aayog) - proposed the idea of using the blockchain technology to fight against fake medicinal drugs.

NITI Aayog CEO Amitabh Kant, was also one of the attendees at the Blockchain Congress event where he said: “Unlike other technologies, Blockchain is not visible to citizens or consumers, but works in the background. It is important to understand where it can be used and where it has little or no value. We need to work towards use cases which significantly exploit the advantages of Blockchain.”