The Algorand Foundation is branching out into India
Blockchain protocol Algorand (ALGO) has entered the world’s most populous country, India, with a project aimed at supporting the nation’s transformation from the back office of the Web2 world to the innovation center of the Web3 world, two senior representatives told CoinDesk. Millions of Indians take on outsourced work from Silicon Valley companies and global banks.
Launched on Wednesday, AlgoBharat will not have a registered entity in India, but will see a dedicated team focus on real-world blockchain tools in India with relevance to the rest of the world, the representatives said. The word Bharat represents the nation of India.
“India was actually the back office for Web2, right? The innovation might have been led elsewhere,” said Anil Kakani, a vice president and India country manager at the Algorand Foundation. India.”
In recent weeks, Kakani and Nikhil Varma, the technical lead of AlgoBharat, have toured the country’s engineering universities and blockchain-friendly states, but have stayed away from the rulemakers.
“We will certainly work with regulators this year,” said Kakani, who was a senior adviser on India at the US Treasury Department. “We have understood the appetite for Web3 here. When we talk to regulators, we will bring a track record of working with the National Bank of Italy and the Marshall Islands CBDC project.”
India’s position on crypto has gone from the central bank trying to ban the industry’s access to financial services to a strict tax regime by 2022. Currently, India is pushing for global consensus on rules for crypto assets as president of the Group of 20 nations (G-20), while as they ask the Web3 and blockchain industry to disconnect from crypto.
“We think the regulatory framework that is starting to be laid out in India makes a lot of sense,” Varma said. “Bringing India’s Web3 companies under anti-money laundering for clarity with KYC and AML laws is a sign of institutionalization of the space and we think that is positive.”
Algorand’s India plan is divided into three pillars – expanding the Web3 developer base through education and events at universities, focusing on startups transitioning from Web2 to Web3, and focusing on high-profile use case partnerships with central and state governments.
“These partnerships with governments and ministries are already happening,” Kakani said. “They have hundreds of thousands if not millions of users, and we want to sustain their transition to address key bottlenecks in their systems from a Web2 to a Web3 solution.”
So far, Algorand has announced partnerships with the state of Maharashtra to create 100 million NFTs to store personal health data, with the Self Employed Women’s Association (SEWA) to support women-led businesses building blockchain solutions, with Jawaharlal Nehru Technological University and the Indian School of Business to launch faculty development programs, and with T-Hub, a prominent innovation hub, as its first blockchain partner to support startups.
