Atul Khekade, Early Investor and Head of Ecosystem Development at XinFin FinTech Pte. ltd, said, “The Budget 2018-19 is focused towards driving and promoting a digital economy. While the global economy has largely transformed to a digital economy, India is not far behind, especially with emphasis on technology to drive the quality of education and the role of FinTech industry to help the MSMEs of India. Blockchain technology has been welcomed by the government and can be deployed in use cases across education, aviation, healthcare, infrastructure like roads and rails, among other segments. Blockchain has the capacity to reduce governmental burden on the treasury by using it to attain funding and financing for micro to macro-projects in education, healthcare or infrastructure to begin with. A large part of the Budget focused on rural areas and upliftment of the less-priviled gestratas of the society and we can achieve to bridge that gap using blockchain too – by eliminating intermediaries in farm supply chain and finance. Blockchain at large will see a big role in the country in the coming days with the ability to transform every industry with more transparency, efficiency and high fraud prevention.”
- The Budget saw focus on bridging the gap and providing more amenities to the rural populace like providing free LPG connections to covering people under the large healthcare scheme and opening Eklavya schools in tribal areas.
- Blockchain for rural India and healthcare: help reduce intermediaries in the supply chain process that eventually help farmer distress by bringing more revenue to them. Similarly, in healthcare, blockchain can be used from fraud and duplication management to creating more financing opportunities for new projects
- Promoting Digital Economy: The speech also pointed towards a push towards promoting a digital economy where India transforms from a blackboard to digital board in sectors like infrastructure, healthcare, education, road and rail, among other industries.
- Usage of blockchain by Government (Polls to Banking): has been welcomed by the government and that will see a huge boon for the economy in the coming year. More industries will be open to using the efficiencies of blockchain to reduce anomalies, increase transparency and fraud prevention through blockchain. Another area where blockchain can be used to revolutionize the country is voting. By employing this technology, the entire cost of polls can be completed in a much lower cost and more secure manner.
- Blockchain for Financing Projects: With the rise of ideas like borderless payments, cashless economy, Internet of Things, cloud and cyber security, we will see a higher impact on the society through the usage of enterprise technologies to solve problems at a macro-level. Blockchain, for instance, has seen its share of intrigue in the recent times and its multitude use cases. Now the welcome move by Government will enable different industries like aviation, healthcare, infrastructure, supply chain management to test the nuances of the technology to create a robust digital economy.
- Financial Inclusion: According to a joint study released by ASSOCHAM and EY, 19% of the Indian population continues to remain unbanked, or financially excluded despite the best efforts from financial institutions. Similarly, India loses 10% as fees in remittances received from NRIs from across the world due to the presence of intermediaries and hierarchies of layers. While the Government of India has taken several steps to spread financial inclusion and create a secure and transparent environment, we still see issues like financial exclusion of the grass-root population in India to loss of revenue that could potentially help with infrastructural growth.
- Cash Flow through Blockchain: The use of Blockchain technology solves a lot of these issues that plague the country currently. From using cryptography technologies to bring more people under the umbrella of the organized financial sector, reducing intermediary costs lost every time an NRI remits money or the problems of unidentified/unregistered citizens – it will facilitate a greater flow of services from identity management to better remittances and its consequent effect on the local economy.
- Infrastructural Deficit: India also faces a huge infrastructure deficit today due to the lack of access to finance for many of the infrastructure projects and providers. Blockchain provides transparency to the international investors who may be looking to invest in India’s infrastructure projects and contribute to its growth. Considering the strong pro-development stance of the government, the welcome move for blockchain will enable funding of different projects across the country.
@Technuter.com News Service