Blockchain This Week: PM Endorses Blockchain, Calls It An Opportunity In Technology & More

At the India Ideas Summit, hosted by the US-India Business Council, last week, Prime Minister Narendra Modi acknowledged the prominence of blockchain, where he endorsed it as an ‘opportunity in frontier technology,’ as he pitched it to the global investors, reminding India’s tech capabilities, alongside highlighting the country’s half a billion connected internet users.

In an attempt to set the post-pandemic economic recovery agenda, PM Modi invited US businesses to invest in various economic sectors in India, including agriculture, civil aviation, healthcare and fintech among others.

He said that opportunities in technologies abound in the frontier technologies of 5G, Big Data analytics, quantum computing, blockchain and internet of things.

Meanwhile, Unicorn India Ventures-backed blockchain startup ChitMonks recently launched two new products for the unorganised chit fund industry, ChitFunds 2.0 and ChitPe. With this, the company looks to partner with chit fund companies as well as customers across India.

Prior to this, the company had launched a blockchain-based product called T-Chits, which allowed Telangana state government regulators to administer chit fund operations. In a local media report, Pavan Adipuram, the cofounder and CEO of ChitMonks said that the new products are an extension of its existing product that it had developed for the state regulators. “With this platform, we want to make chit fund companies digitally ready and it will prove to be extremely useful at a time when offline relations are all going online,” he added.

At present, the chit fund industry in Telangana alone stands at INR 19K Cr annually, and about 1.5K companies are operating in this unorganised sector. Overall, in India, the number stands at INR 1.5 Lakh Cr, the report added.

Blockchain Graph Of The Week: 

How Cybersecurity Issues Affect Organisations’ Blockchain Strategy 

According to Delliot’s Blockchain Survey, only around one-fifth view cybersecurity concerns alone prevents them from advancing blockchain strategy, indicating some balancing of concerns, while 58% of the participants said that cybersecurity issues are among several kinds of issues that figure into their blockchain strategy.

Blockchain News Of The Week

Huawei Files A Patent For Blockchain Related Storage Device 

Chinese tech giant Huawei recently announced that it has applied for a new patent related to blockchain technology that deals with storage techniques and devices. Besides this, Huawei has previously filed patents related to blockchain-based settlement platforms. In addition to this, the tech giant has also signed a strategic cooperation agreement with the People’s Bank of China. However, the details of the agreement are yet to be disclosed.

Tel Aviv Gets A New Central Blockchain Securities Lending Platform

The Tel-Aviv Stock Exchange (TASE) announced that it has launched a central blockchain securities lending platform. The new platform is said to enable direct lending among all the major financial instruments. Also, it serves a unified platform for all securities lending activities, thereby giving access to larger securities transactions within shorter timeframes, alongside short-term transactions. Orly Grinfeld, EVP and head of Clearing at TASE said that the blockchain technology platform will present a new level of safety for securities lending and will support growth for transactions.

Alibaba Launches AntChain For Trust & Transparency In Industrial Processes 

In a bid to bring in transparency and trust in the industrial processes, Chinese ecommerce giant Alibaba launched a new blockchain solution called AntChain. The new platform is said to be built on top of Ant Group’s blockchain technology, which combines artificial intelligence, internet of things (IoT), among other technologies, as reported by South China Morning Post. Li Jieli, the general manager of blockchain solutions and innovations at Ant said that the applications of enterprise blockchain technology is still at a nascent stage and the new platform will support digital transactions, reduce cost across industries, as the digital economy takes shape.