Following in the footsteps of Meta and Twitter, Indian Web2 companies have also started building their Web3 verticals, boosting demand for blockchain developers and crypto experts.
According to multiple job posts by fintech unicorn Slice, the company is looking to enter the crypto payments space and “increase crypto adoption in India”. BusinessLine could not verify whether the fintech company is working on building a crypto exchange but one of the job openings posted by the company is for a backend developer (crypto exchange). Slice has also hired for roles such as smart contracts developers.
Slice did not respond to BusinessLine queries, till the time of press.
Similarly, Hike has also put out job openings for a blockchain developer and crypto economist, as it plans to build smart-contracts and crypto-wallets integrations in Rush. Rush is Hike’s play-to-earn gaming platform which has received investment from Ethereum layer-2 scaling solution Polygon, marking the gaming platform’s foray into Web3.
Harsh Jain, Founder of gaming unicorn Dream11, has also spoken about the company’s ambitions around Web3 at the 26th Wharton India Economic Forum. Responding to a question about Web3’s potential in the gaming industry, Jain said, “On the Web3 side of things, an entire new business model of play-to-earn is building in the gaming space, and we are doing our research on it.”
Speaking to BusinessLine about the potential reasons behind more and more Web2 companies planning a Web3 foray, Adith Poddar, founding partner at Gemba Capital, said, “Leveraging Web3 technology has greater advantages as Web2 companies can grow faster. It allows them to design products differently using Web3 infrastructure (no data silos), experiment with different business models, and also incentivise early adopters through token rewards, among other things.”
He added that more consumer companies with a young customer base will be foraying into Web3, as young users tend to be faster in adopting it, Both Slice and Dream11 have a majority of young users in its customer base. Similarly, other consumer companies focusing young users like Chingari, DailyHunt and Josh have also announced their foray into Web3 ecosystem.
Adding to this, Siddarth Pai, Founding Partner at 3one4 Capital, said, “Not venturing into Web3 in the 2020s is similar to not venturing onto the internet in the late 90s – it’s the signal of a slow death of any business. Very few sectors will be untouched by some aspect of Web3. I expect most Indian start-ups to start onboarding Web3 specialists and piloting use-cases of Web3 technology in their operations. Nobody can afford to stand still as stagnancy is a death knell in this fast paced environment.”
This demand for Web3 talent has also led upskilling companies to add blockchain courses. Anup Jain, Managing Partner at Orios Ventures Partners, said, “All companies which are able to enhance productivity by adopting blockchain will adopt it, given that the regulatory environment is not a hurdle. Blockchain is also the next big upskilling opportunity, which is why companies like NxtWave have already started rolling out courses in that direction.”
In addition to NxtWave, the likes of AlmaBetter and The Product Folks have also started offering skilling courses in crypto and Web3.
Published on
April 20, 2022
