The Centre is considering a proposal to set up a Centre of Excellence for blockchain technology in Hyderabad to drive innovation.
The proposal has been submitted by C-DAC Hyderabad, along with the Institute for Development and Research in Banking Technology (IDRBT) and Veermata Jijabai Technological Institute (VJTI), Mumbai.
“The Centre of Excellence, proposed to come up at C-DAC’s Hyderabad unit, will be the first one by the government for blockchain technology,” said a senior official of the Ministry of Electronics and IT, who did not wish to be identified.
Another official said while the project was still under discussion, it had been decided to begin work on applications of blockchain technology. “We plan to use blockchain to digitise and secure land records for Telangana. Once we successfully deploy it, we can then think of scaling it,” said the official on condition of anonymity.
Finance, IoT
“We are looking for more applications where blockchain can be used. IDRBT will work on and develop use cases and applications for finance sector. VJTI will work on IoT capabilities,” the official said. IT firms such as Infosys, TCS, Wipro and Cognizant had made significant investments in blockchain technology, while banks had already started using the technology, he added.
“ICICI Bank successfully executed its first two transactions using Blockchain technology in October 2016. Yes Bank has implemented a multi-nodal Blockchain transaction in January 2017 to provide efficient services to customers. Kotak Mahindra Bank and Axis Bank have announced interest and started conduction pilot transactions,” according to an internal Ministry presentation on the topic.