By Vishal Chawla
While blockchain technology is developing fast around the world, and there are not many Indian startups working in distributed ledgers. The main reason behind the fact is that there has been regulatory clarity on the use of public blockchain networks in India for years. According to analysts, a proper regulatory framework can promote innovative blockchain startups.
Nevertheless, in this article, we bring to you some of the the leading blockchain startups based out of India, and their unique role in the crypto-economy. The following startups work across different domains including exchanges, and DeFi platforms, smart contracts and layer 2 scaling solutions. Please note that the startups appear in alphabetical order.
1| CoinDCX
CoinDCX was launched in April 2018 by Neeraj Khandelwal and Sumit Gupta in Mumbai. The startup provides users with single-point access to a diverse suite of crypto-based financial products and services that are backed by security processes and insurance. Its proprietary aggregation model offers the highest liquidity from leading global crypto exchanges. Users can buy and sell more than 100 coins instantly with INR.
The platform’s other product is Lend, which is a credit facility to help users earn interests on cryptocurrencies. Apart from this, the startup has also introduced DCX Learn, a platform for people through which they can gain knowledge about cryptocurrency and blockchain technology. CoinDCX raised 5.5 million investment so far from leading venture capital firms such as Polychain Capital, Coinbase Ventures, Bain Capital Ventures and HDR Group.
2| InstaDapp
Hyderabad-based Instadapp is one of the most prominent decentralized finance platforms on Ethereum. InstaDapp aims to drive interoperability between various DeFi blockchain protocols for ease of app development, allowing developers to start leveraging its full potential.
Instadapp provides users and developers with a single point of integration to access all the Defi protocols. This is done using smart contract accounts owned by users to manage and optimize their funds across any number of protocols. The platform eliminates the process it takes to launch a decentralized application by removing the need to learn solidity or go through the tedious process of endless debugging and allows users to innovate and execute rapidly. Instadapp raised $2.4 million in a seed round of funding by Pantera Capita, Naval Ravikant and Coinbase Ventures.
3| KoineArth
Dr Praphul Chandra, professor at Insofe institute, started KoineArth in 2017 to work at the crossing of blockchains, AI and Mechanism Design. Today, KoineArth provides its customers with a data pipeline & machine learning algorithms to analyse blockchain-enabled interactions.
KoineArth’s Nash platform presents solution frameworks that can be customised to produce a broad assortment of real-world blockchain usecases using a configurable state machine for digital assets. Nash implements a library of incentive mechanisms which facilitate token-based economics to be embedded in blockchain applications. These incentive mechanisms can manage asset access and ownership in a game theory setting.
Further, KoineArth’s marketsN is a collaboration platform which is cloud hosted blockchain and AI based product. Using the solution, a business can bring together all the suppliers for getting a real time picture. Unlike traditional AI software, marketsN operates on data not only within an organisation (from ERP) but also with live real-time data from suppliers. marketsN’s built-in marketbot utilizes ML algorithms for mining insights from blockchain data. KoineArth raised an undisclosed amount from Inventus Capital.
4| Matic Network 
Matic Network is a Bengaluru-based startup founded by Jayanti Kanani, Sandeep Nailwal and Anurag Arjun. It was launched with a public Token Sale which took place in April 2019, and the team raised $5,600,000.
Matic aims to bring massive scale to Ethereum blockchain using an adapted version of Plasma protocol with Proof of Stake (PoS) based side chains. This tackles the issue of slow Ethereum block confirmations and high transaction fees, needed for mainstream adoption.
Matic achieves scale by utilising side chains for off-chain computation while ensuring asset security using the Plasma framework and a decentralised network of Proof-of-Stake (PoS) validators. This enables a single Matic sidechain to achieve up to 65k transactions/second on a single Matic block compared to only 20TPS on Ethereum. Matic provides SDKs and APIs for fast and easy development of decentralised applications.
5| Nuo
Varun Deshpande, Ratnesh Ray and Siddharth Verma rolled out Nuo Network in 2018, which is a decentralised finance (DeFi) application that implements a platform uniting lenders and borrowers by employing smart contracts. Nuo Network uses partner exchanges for making tradew through smart contracts. Nuo was one of the first movers in the DeFi protocol space from India.
The firm also launched a new digital banking platform called Juno, which is built on top of Ethereum and relies on the Nuo protocol for neo banking services. The startup’s flagship product enables users to hold the dollar-pegged USDC stablecoin and earn a 5.5 percent annual interest rate. The company has offices in Mumbai and Singapore. Its product has facilitated $25M in transactions for lending and borrowing.
6| WazirX
Our list ends with WazirX, one of the leading cryptocurrency exchanges in India which was founded by Nischal Shetty in December 2017. As far as crypto exchanges and trading platforms go, WaziX has distinguished itself from others. For example, it was the first Indian exchange to introduce a native token called the WazirX token (WRX), which played a conducive role in accelerating user growth and community engagement on the platform.
The platform innovated and started WazirX P2P, a unique auto-matching P2P engine soon after the RBI enforced a banking ban on crypto exchanges. WazirX has more than 200,000 app downloads, with almost 80 tokens trading on its markets. It is accessible on various platforms such as Android, iOS, Mac and desktop clients.
The platform also launched Smart Token Fund (STF) – a community-driven initiative where cryptocurrency enthusiasts can find smart traders, and let them grow their cryptocurrency portfolio on WazirX. Recently WazirX was acquired by Binance, the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange and blockchain ecosystem in terms of total volume traded, with users from over 180 countries.
Copyright @ 2020 AnalyticsIndia magazine
