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India Becomes a Breeding Ground for Blockchain Engineers

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Samburaj Das
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The rising demand for blockchain technology globally is seeing India emerge as a leading talent pool of blockchain talent.

Indian students and professionals are quickly signing up for blockchain-specialty courses to equip themselves with technical skills as corporates – both home and abroad – begin to research and adopt the decentralized innovation that powers cryptocurrencies like bitcoin.

Details from a Times of India  report today, India’s biggest English-language newspaper, reveals e-learning marketplace Udemy witnessing a 978% jump in enrollments for blockchain courses. Enrollments from India, in particular, is higher than the global average at 80%. Indian students’ enrollments in bitcoin courses have also doubled with this year’s crypto boom fueling their interest in digital currencies.

Elias Haase, founder of London-based blockchain startup B9lab stated:

We launched our online learning platform in May 2016 and we’ve seen Indian developers sign up very early on. We count [IT] majors like Tata and Infosys among our customers.

Regionally, Indian blockchain startup Primechain was forced to restrict a free online course called Blockchain Basics Bootcamp after an overwhelming response by students and professionals. Primechain is noteworthy for being the technology provider for India’s banking blockchain consortium BankChain. Launched in February, the consortium comprises of the country’s biggest banks alongside partners like Microsoft and KPMG.

“The response was tremendous and we couldn’t manage it. Hence we had to restrict this course only to personnel of BankChain members,” stated Shinam Arora, cofounder of Primechain.

All of which, is expected to support the ever-growing demand for blockchain talent on a global scale. Today’s report cites LinkedIn data showing a 30% year-on-year increase in blockchain-related job postings.

“Blockchain technology can be deployed in any industry that deals with public information and needs to ensure transparency of data,” stated Thammiah BN, managing director at HR specialist Kelly Services India. “At present, demand is largely from fintech startups and a few IT product and services companies with skills in blockchain platforms like Ethereum, Stellar, Ripple, Hyperledger; and candidates need to understand cryptography and distributed databases.”

A Significant Talent Pool

With a significant margin of 40%, India leads Australia as the largest pool of blockchain talent in the Asia-Pacific region. China, Singapore, and Japan all follow after, making the five countries home to 80% of the region’s blockchain engineers.

Meanwhile, universities in Europe and the United States have set the precedent in offering blockchain-specific courses in their educational curriculum. Although India is yet to see a marked move toward educational courses on blockchain on a systemic level, there are notable examples of such efforts taking shape. For instance, the technology-forward state of Andhra Pradesh in southern India has partnered Singapore’s central bank to, among other initiatives, develop education programs for students in the state. Digital payments and blockchain innovation are particularly underlined as key objectives.

Earlier this year, the state of Kerala – also in the south of India – established the country’s second blockchain academy. The academy was installed by an incubator funded by the central and state governments of India.

Visa, the world’s largest payments network, expanded its blockchain technology development center in India last year, going from 400 engineers at launch in August 2015 to over 1,000 presently.

Featured image from Shutterstock.