Hard Fork | Talk Show | Season 01 | Episode 09 | The Do's and Don'ts of Building on Blockchain

Blockchain development and India

The Indian Blockchain movement has been hot and happening, a lot, but mostly on and for the foreign soil - Indian founders living and working overseas - building on and for the Blockchain - some amazing products and projects. However, there are many companies in India too who, despite all the troubles in their way, are working hard to create a mark in this industry.

Building on Blockchain requires a different set of skills not found easily and also an adaptive client which is even rarer for a startup. India has abundant software engineering resource; in a recent report somewhere, India seems to have the largest blockchain development resource bank in the world.

However, If you are looking out to building something on and for the Blockchain, it is important to be aware that like all other technologies, it has its own set of limitations, dos and don'ts. Blockchain is not the solution to all our problems - but for certain ones, it sure is. So what does it take to build something on Blockchain? Why is blockchain not the magic wand that we all desire?

Questions on our mind

This episode of Hard Fork is dedicated to finding out some of these facts:

• What does it really take to build something on Blockchain?
• There is a lot of hype vis-à-vis reality. What in your opinion are the startups not doing right?
• Do you think in the current state of its existence, Blockchain technology implementations are viable?
• What is a viable blockchain project?
• What are the real barriers for the adoption of Blockchain?
• Why is the enterprise adoption so slow in India or imperceptible?
• One worry that people have is that while we can push for skill development but where are the jobs?
• What needs to be done to ensure that we build recruitable or immediately deployable talent in this industry?

The guest

The search for the episode 9 guest was with a lot of constraints. We had already decided on the theme of the episode. We wanted to have someone in the vicinity of our studio, someone with a wide area of knowledge, and someone with an extensive Blockchain based implementation and development experience. After some 2-weeks of talking and meeting with people, our host, Shantanu, received an invite to speak and moderate a panel at an event. This is where he met, Sunil Sharma, a young Founder-CEO, all of 26 years of age and already creating small ripples in the Blockchain development sphere.

Sunil Sharma, Founder-CEO of SquadX, a Blockchain development and Training company based out of Gurgaon, is a dynamic young guy with loads of perceptible ambition. I have met him and his team too - he makes them all function like entrepreneurs and probably one good reason, why they have been doing really well. He leads a talented group of 21 people in SquadX and is also the CEO of a Coingape, a Crypto and Blockchain media company.

The conversation

Our conversations were bordered on the theme of the Season 1 i.e. 'Getting India Started-up on Crypto and Blockchain' and the questions mentioned above. Sunil is a grounded professional and sited many examples from his experiences, opening up his success methods to the world. He helped us list down a few important do's and don'ts of building on blockchain.

The modus operandi of any startup is to ensure a model for bringing in revenue and sales. While business development does take a front seat in a startup journey, Sunil ensured that they take a different track. He asked his team to focus on market research.

Talent availability in the Blockchain industry is a challenge. Sunil overcome this by hiring engineering graduate fresh from college or project managers with a software development experience, and training them according to his company's focus.

Hear it more on the Episode.

End Notes

We have now already premiered 9 episodes of “Hard Fork” – India’s first TV talk show on Crypto and Blockchain on Amazon Fire TV. All Hard Fork episodes are being simulcast on other platforms including YouTube and Facebook.

The Hard Fork YouTube Playlist

Watch Episode 9 of Hard Fork with Sunil Sharma on Amazon Fire TV (FounderINDIA channel), YouTube and Facebook.

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