Blockchain Firm ConsenSys Partnered With The Indian State Of Andhra Pradesh
The government of the Indian state of Andhra Pradesh has partnered with blockchain firm ConsenSys to boost the state’s blockchain ecosystem.
Andhra Pradesh is one of the 29 states of India, situated on the southeastern coast of the country. The state is the seventh-largest in India, with a population of around 50 million.
Founded by Joseph Lubin, ConsenSys is developing a variety of applications which operate on the global distributed computing platform. Its focus is on facilitating the empowerment of people and enabling decentralized governance through the development of software tools that devolve power from the traditional “command and control hierarchies inappropriate for a networked world.”
Under the partnership, ConsenSys will provide strategic technical advisory to prioritize and pilot blockchain use-cases in land titling, supply chain, identity platform, and electronic health records, among other sectors.
Nara Lokesh, the IT minister of Government of Andhra Pradesh, said the government has taken a lead in the country by incorporating FinTech, including cybertech, artificial intelligence (AI), analytics and especially blockchain, as its key strategy for FY18.
“We believe that blockchain technology has tremendous potential to revolutionize the way governments, institutions, and corporates function and is on its course to become the new normal,” Lokesh said. “It also has the potential to transform multiple industries and make processes more democratic, secure, transparent, and efficient. The state government has already taken the lead in introducing blockchain and has a vision of becoming blockchain-enabled through its digital assets by 2019.”
ConsenSys will also collaborate with the government of Andhra Pradesh to establish the first Indian cohort of ConsenSys Education – an institute that will develop blockchain-centric education programs by leveraging ConsenSys’ proprietary educational content. The state will help drive recruitment efforts for ConsenSys Academy India and will also subsidize infrastructural and operational costs for the project.
Kavita Gupta, executive director of ConsenSys, said traditional education programs cannot keep up with the rapidly developing pace of ethereum and blockchain as a whole. He said there’s a need to continue educating new participants in the blockchain ecosystem.
“The ConsenSys Academy is a blockchain education platform with the mission of bridging the deep ethereum knowledge gap and revolutionizing education through blockchain technology,” said Gupta “ConsenSys’ focus for 2018 and beyond will be to uphold its growing responsibilities as a purveyor of this revolutionary technology.”
The collaboration with ConsenSys came after the government of Andhra Pradesh announced its partnership with local firm Covalent Fund to start a blockchain ecosystem as part of the state’s FinTech Valley in Vizag initiative. Last year, the state announced a partnership with blockchain startup ChromaWay to come up with a blockchain solution for land registration problems. The state also partnered with Swiss cybersecurity company WISeKey to secure citizen data with blockchain technology.
