Blockchain technology in India

Opportunities and challenges

The interest around blockchain in India needs to be taken to the next level where we see more pilots and production ready applications. With government bodies, consultancy firms, technology giants, and start-ups coming together on multiple platforms, there are lot of exciting days ahead for blockchain in India.

This Deloitte India publication reviews the concepts of blockchain as a technology, the various use cases explored on it, and the initiatives around blockchain in India. In addition, the challenges faced by the early adopters in developing a Proof of Concept and the various mitigation steps undertaken have been discussed.

Cross-sector use cases need validation

In its simplest form, a blockchain acts like a shared, replicated, append-only database, where write access is shared among participants but validation can be performed by all participants in a public blockchain. The common wider theme that runs across these diverse applications and platforms is the emergence of a new paradigm where ‘trust’ will move from having to be owned and certified by central institutions (like banks or governments) to being actually based on computer science and specifically cryptography, and it will lead to us having a peer-based way to share ownership of digital assets and transfer them.

Many companies are jumping on the blockchain bandwagon but do not have fully vetted use cases. Clients need to pay careful attention before experimenting with blockchain, few considerations like shared database, multiple writers, absence of trust, and other factors like transaction dependency need to be vetted for successful blockchain implementation.

Blockchain has the potential to impact many sectors, from financial services to public sector to healthcare and media industry. The financial services industry is witnessing an increasing number of blockchain-based use cases that yield the potential to drive significant operational and client experience improvements. Globally non-financial use cases have emerged from recording land titles to energy trading and recording fluid samples.