crypto industry in India.
The development also comes at a time when Indian developers in the blockchain and crypto space are attracting global attention after the success of
Polygon and
Instadapp.
The DeFi Alliance’s India chapter is led by
- Joel John, investor at digital asset VC LedgerPrime
- Siddharth Jain, co-founder at Defi Dollar
- Saurabh Sharma, general partner at Jump Capital
- Krishna Sriram, co-founder at Quantstamp
Its inaugural members include
- Vishal Kankani, principal at Multicoin Capital
- Ashwath Balakrishnan, associate at Delphi Digital
- Sowmay Jain, co-founder at Instadapp
- Ajit Tripathi, head of institutional business, Aave
In an industry marred by the regulatory uncertainty, the India chapter seeks to help early-stage founders in the decentralised finance and blockchain ecosystem with institutional liquidity, regulatory advisory, operational support and recruiting.
“Traditional venture firms are still trying to find their feet, and western funds are figuring out the right gateways to foray in,” said John
in a Medium post. The alliance will also provide founders assistance in acquiring talent and strategising go-to markets, among other things.
“With a developer base that ships talent to almost all major technology companies, there has never been a doubt about India’s ability to churn out tech talent,” John said in the Medium post. “Now, a substantial number of those developers are looking to develop decentralised applications, thanks to educational awareness and a great hackathon culture moulded by ecosystem enablers like Devfolio’s ETHIndia.”
Despite a lack of clarity on the regulatory front, India’s strong payment infrastructure and the country’s large user base make it ripe for the DeFi industry, John went on to say. “The nation has been symbolic of everything DeFi stands for.”
DeFi Alliance is a member-based international trade association created for decentralised financial market professionals to connect and collaborate. It says its mission is to “drive the global adoption of DeFi technology and co-create a transparent, low cost, and trust-able decentralised financial system”.