How India Can Accelerate Digital Transformation With Blockchain

Blockchain is rightly being described as a ‘new internet’ that can serve as the foundation for a new wave of applications in areas as diverse as finance to real estate to e-commerce and even government services.

- Rashi Varshney

In the 1990's, when the web came into the picture, websites were a geeky concept, and up until 2000's, we could list out organizations with or without websites. As new technologies have evolved, both private and government organizations have adopted a gradual approach for implementing emerging technologies. From mobile to cloud, firms are experimenting with new technologies. Blockchain is the latest technology which has attracted huge attention.

Blockchain is the same technology behind powering Bitcoin, which was not able to create a big enough impact in the market. The blockchain is basically a database where all Bitcoin transactions are recorded and stored. However, now many have focused on the ways to use blockchain without involving Bitcoins for transactions or self-agreement ledger way. The blockchain or ‘distributed ledgers,’ as they are often described is updated and maintained, not by a single body, company or government, but run by a network of users. It’s akin to the way a shared Google spreadsheet is maintained by its users. The technology relies on a network of computers, and hence organizations view it as an attractive technology as it eliminates the need of central institution to keep records.

“Blockchain typically should be considered when you want to eliminate trusted intermediaries, add transparency and immutable audit trail, have multiparty data sharing when the parties don’t trust each other and improve efficiencies by maintaining constantly synced up distributed ledger,” said Pandurang Kamat, Chief Architect – Innovation and R&D at Persistent Systems.

The effectiveness of a website to digitally transform enterprises and various organizations were seen with the likes of Amazon, Google and other internet giants. On similar lines, IT leaders are of the opinion that blockchain can enable India to leapfrog the digital transformation.