India, home to over 1.2 billion people and titleholder of the world’s fastest growing economy, has seen a plethora of sometimes unclear regulations and restrictions pertaining to the emerging blockchain and cryptocurrency industry.
For months, there were rumors that India’s central bank was issuing their own cryptocurrency and was going to lighten up their stance on digital assets until the Reserve Bank of India botched the idea.
India’s central bank commanded all banks to stop serving crypto exchanges last year, but now Indian officials are pushing for the creation of a strict framework for the growing digital assets space.
There is clearly a lot of uncertainty in India’s cryptocurrency and blockchain sector, but despite this uncertainty, large conglomerates and banks in India are still eyeing cryptocurrency— or at least blockchain technology— as a viable way to manage their finances.
India’s Biggest Conglomerates Explore Blockchain Technology
According to a report published by the India Times, top Indian companies are currently trialing blockchain technology to reconcile accounts, make payments, keep proper records, and manage internal funds.
Speaking on the matter, Sai Venkateshwaran, a partner and head of CFO advisory at KPMG in India, said:
Several large companies are evaluating various use cases of blockchain, including in areas such as managing intra-group transactions and as a logical extension, looking at its use as a group treasury management tool for more efficient cash and working capital management.
These large Indian conglomerates experimenting with blockchain technology want to avoid a situation like the IL&FS takeover, where the lack of proper record keeping contributed to the takeover of the financial company by India’s government.
More and more Indian companies are willing to explore alternatives with blockchain technology to ensure financial records and contracts are properly documented.
Some of the big companies running several pilot tests using distributed ledge technology (DLT) as a record-keeping tool for balancing the books include Hindustan Unilever, ABG Shipyard, HDFC Bank, and Reliance Industries.
Realizing the Capabilities of DLT and Blockchain Technology
These companies realize that the use of blockchain and DLT can potentially remove all possibility of discrepancies. For large corporations with multiple levels of data flow, this security and transparency functionality is extremely useful and attractive.
According to sources quoted by the India Times, these corporations say the testing results from using blockchain technology for record-keeping are promising. If the final results from testing prove to be impressive, the corporations involved have plans to expand blockchain use to other areas.
As stated by one of the senior technology officials working on the blockchain pilots:
Many companies have huge cash transactions and to keep records of all these is tough, but blcokchain can be a good source for record keeping too.
All in all, if all goes well with the corporations testing, we can expect Indian conglomerates to have a big future in implementing blockchain technology.
If large conglomerates start implementing blockchain technology, will this have a positive effect on cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin (BTC)? Let us know what you think in the comment section below.
