The state government of Telangana recently announced its plan to set up a blockchain incubator for start-ups working in the field.
They will be able to partner with some of the leading educational institutes in the city such as IIIT-Hyderabad and the Indian School of Business, a senior government official said earlier this week.
Blockchain is now a widely deployed technology, finding use beyond the financial realm. The adoption of it in sectors such as health, agriculture, and education will help the government implement schemes and provide trust and immutability to the assets.
According to a media report, the government has developed 12 use-cases wherein blockchain technology will solve some of the country’s issues. In the coming days, they will develop multiple initiatives, an officer on special duty (OSD) said on the sidelines of the launch of T-Block, the accelerator programme.
T-Block Accelerator is a four-month programme that the government has launched in partnership with Tech Mahindra, Microsoft and IBC Media. It will nurture start-ups that rely on blockchain applications to scale up their operations, the report noted.
After the registrations for T-Block, a one-week boot camp and a four-week training programme will be held. The participating start-ups will receive mentorship and guidance from experts in the start-up and blockchain space.
Out of the 25 start-ups selected for the first phase of the programme, about five will be selected for phase-II. These five will then get a chance to test their idea in the market apart from funding and the ability to work with private companies’ blockchain teams.
The report quoted a study that said Indian start-ups have only tapped 0.2% of the investment surge in blockchain. T-Block aims to bridge this gap and take seed and validation level start-ups with strong business and blockchain use-cases and get them to an investible stage.
Last month, the National Informatics Centre (NIC) launched a centre of excellence (CoE) in blockchain technology in Bengaluru, Karnataka.
The centre will provide blockchain as a service and allow all stakeholders to benefit from shared learning, experiences, and resources, as OpenGov reported.
According to a press release, the inauguration of the blockchain centre was held earlier this week by the Minister of Electronics and Information Technology, Ravi Shankar Prasad. Several dignitaries from the central and state government attended the event.
It has developed blockchain-based proofs-of-concept for select government-use cases to understand the potential benefits of the technology, the release noted. New and previously unforeseen applications of blockchain in the government are expected to enhance transparency, traceability, and trust in e-governance systems.
The centre will facilitate government departments to build proofs-of-concept for uses of blockchain technology in different dimensions of governance, which will lead to the large-scale deployment of tech-based applications. NIC provides a robust and agile infrastructure.
It will also provide blockchain as a service (BaaS) for the efficient hosting of blockchain networks.
