India's Crypto Story | Denver, Irshad, Nidhi | ETHMumbai 2026

My name is Ershad. Um, I have been associated with Hash Demergent for the longest time that for about 4 years and which I recently exited. Um, I was leading platform there. And that's where I was hosting a lot of different initiatives on ground, different kind of activations, etc. Uh, I also uh, led the India Blockchain Week Conference for three editions.

Uh, so that's what I did. Uh, you know?

Yeah, um, so I'm Denver. Um, I'm co-founder of Defolio, also co-organizer of um, the Eth India set of um, hackathons, fellowships, and much more um, since 2018. Um, recently also been um, helping uh, the Devcon team uh, with stuff on ground um, here in India. Yeah.

Uh, hello, I'm Nidhi. Um, I was working at the UNICEF before and I was very interested in uh, learning about how to take blockchains to uh, people who don't understand it, governments, non-profits, and that's what we do at Voice Tech. And now I'm also helping Devcon team here. This is our uh, like Shahrukh said in Chak De, this is our 70 minute, you know? So we have to make full of use of these 70 minutes that we have when Devcon comes to India.

So yeah.

Cool. Uh, so the agenda that we have today, uh, we will be covering topics around grassroots adoption, what that means to each of us, how we see that evolve. Uh, we'll be touching upon the regulatory environment which is something very important to talk about. Uh, um, and then we'll be talking about users and builders in the Indian crypto ecosystem. Uh, and we'll be touching uh, crypto as a public good in a developing nation where we talk about uh uh concepts like retro retro PGF as well as decentralized funding.

And finally ending with where do we go from here? Um So, maybe we can get started first. Uh Who'd like to go first? Should I?

I can get some I can set some context. Um so, like yeah, when when we talk about all of this like and uh like first of all like this this format is like a little new for us. It's like a uh it's a no moderator sort of fireside. So, we just thought that we'll keep this format more like a discussion between the three of us. Similar like we were having a discussion before this backstage and we're just continuing the discussion here.

Um and hopefully uh we we get to share our thoughts with you and then you also let us know uh either at the end of the panel or eventually you let us know what your thoughts uh on the discussion all right. Um so, I think um like Irshad will focus on a little more on uh you know, his experiences uh with uh the the the the growth story and I'll focus a little more on builder stuff and uh um and Nidhi can speak from her experience uh on on on the governance uh side as well, right? Uh so, to kick things off uh like my my thoughts on uh the India story are that in terms of use cases, I think we don't have super obvious answers here. Just getting that out of the way. We have a relatively stable currency which is not which does not depeg.

Um we we it's probably not uh like like the best but it's quite good, right? You you'll find that it's not like in a very volatile situation. So, our purchasing power does hold. We are able to make future plans on how our money like, you know, like I know that the cost of my pani puri is not going to change much in the next week or in a month from now, right? So, I can plan as per that, right?

And also on the other end like it is fairly easy to send P2P payments within India thanks to the Stellar network of of UPI and our strong fintech ecosystem, right? So, then comes to what what do we want like what do we see as India use cases and and here what do we see as opportunities? The most obvious from thing that most people also point out to is the strength of our developer user base, right? We are the second largest community on GitHub and fast fast-growing have millions of you know, developers here right here in India and they are all like technical and building products have the capability to build digital products, right? So, I think that is very exciting for for me personally and how do we take care of like how do we benefit from that sort of human resource?

Yeah, I'd like to ask Nidhi what what are you generally most excited about in terms of when you think about the India story?

Yeah, like you correctly said you know, we have connect and we have our in Argentina last year and there it was bring Argentina on chain and there was a clear use case as to what this technology can do in Argentina and is doing there. But here in India, it's a very unique case like Denver mentioned, we have a good currency, we have good fintech, we have a payments happening good. Then what is India's story? I think for me it would be like pitching Ethereum or this and this blockchain technology as an infra layer which is complementary to in some way the digital public infrastructure we already have and it's strong. The open source communities that are working you have a number of you have ONDC which has released a number of three.

You have NPCI also working on many open source technologies. So I think my thinking right now it's by the way a very open question this and we we are soliciting answers and hope you all also think more about this and come to Devcon prepared with answers and more questions. But I for me the direction I'm thinking about now is given Ethereum's new focus as well on the crops as Vitalik tweeted about and the whole open source mandate. This is a very practical entry point, a very low hanging fruit and it it works well. So I think technically I'm not a technical person but technically if we have to pitch Ethereum that'll be a good entry point.

The DPI institution especially the government back ones that we have. What do you think Ishan?

[clears throat]

God yeah. So I think I agree with what both of you just said right like one of the most exciting things for us is the developer powerhouse that we have. Statistically what it's I think Electric Capital said it was some 17% of new developers who come in are from India. And on the other side, uh, we also spoke about, um, we were talking about Chainalysis as a report that came out. Chainalysis ranked India number one for three consecutive years in adoption.

What that means is like on certain metrics, etc., it was ranked number one. You know, that cannot be ignored. That's a That's a big number. So, I feel that things have been really, uh, positioned well for us.

Uh, okay, there is users, there is developers, and frankly this is the kind of thing that I've been seeing when we pitched to sponsors for IBW, I'm sure like, uh, that's what you would also feel. The interest that you hear from them is, "Hey, we are interested in the developer ecosystem in India or, uh, the users in India." And, uh, that's frankly what's been coming out. And so, uh, it's it's been a strong one, but uh, where I'd like to take this conversation a little more is then, "Okay, how are the other things?" Like when you talk about grassroot, uh, adoption, how are the other things?

Um, yes, these two elements are good. Um, then we talk about startups. It is, uh, we have a number of about like a thousand plus, a thousand two hundred startups overall, right? Now, these are founders from India, founders who may be in different parts of the world right now, but that's the number. But, if I were to like ask you guys to like name, uh, how many are the very successful one?

Of course, we'll talk about Polygon and a few others. Stories right in Stead and Polygon and me etc., but we we tend to stop after a certain time. So, I feel that that's one of the things we need to talk about as to like, "Okay, why do we not then not see this developer account that we have, which is crazy?" It's the second largest dev market for Web3 in the world.

Why aren't we then seeing, you know, a proportionate amount of startups coming from market? So, uh, that's one of the things I think that maybe we can touch upon a bit.

Sure. Yeah, like uh from my understanding uh the biggest thing is uh from the the sort of pipeline from the very early stage builder to founders is a little broken, right? Um now for a long time uh the understanding of most people, like the introduction to Ethereum or even to broader Web3 to a lot of developers in India has been through hackathons, right? And now hackathons have been uh I mean they are great, like of course you get to try new technologies and build build cool stuff over a weekend, uh but I don't I think what it has also done is also frame this that okay, you're you're building just to like to fulfill the objective of getting a prize, right? Um and now now what that does is that you're just you're just building products for the sake literally for the sake of building up like winning a prize rather than actually trying to solve a problem.

So, there's not much thought put into what the business side of business what business even feasible, right? And I think uh now like you will see 26 2026 is a very interesting uh sort of market where uh almost all of Web3 companies are shedding all pretense uh like pretenses of like uh like it now everybody is talking about business, right? Now everybody wants to talk about founders. Um so, how can we help more of that happen? Um there are two main parts of it that like there are two options, like sitting in India as a founder, you have two options.

Either you're you're sitting in India, you build for India, or you're sitting in India, you build for the world, right? Uh sitting in India and building for the world is turning out to be an option that a lot of people are choosing and we're getting some success. Sitting in India and building for India is becoming becoming a little bit of a closed option. Um and I'll let, you know, Irshad also talk about it a bit.

Yeah, something I'd like to add on the That's a very good framing, by the way. Uh and the the latter of like sitting in India and building for India, Voishtek we uh uh my husband and I, Devansh, uh and I started it. We are Indians. This product is for India. But, I think there are two hurdles.

One is that um like you said, the problem statement is not defined very well. Like we didn't start this product in a hackathon. We started out of our lived experiences. We felt like uh fundraising in nonprofits is not sustainable and it's not impact-driven driven by impact at all or by outcomes at all. So, there was a clear reason for us to build the this product.

And I feel like from the public sector side or even the private sector side, there should be more of these uh platforms like hackathons where there are very clear problem statements defined either in a I've been in talks with the UNICEF and my colleagues before this. They are like, "We have problem statements. We just don't have the technical capacity to build a product around it. So, can we have like uh hackathons that are focused on say just helping define that problem area one. Uh and especially from the government side, we are seeing uh like MeitY has released their blockchain for India challenge.

And if you see their website, it's very well like bracketed into these are the supply chain, public health, and different things. And that's good. That's a welcome change. But, that was definitely a hurdle uh of building being an Indian and building in India. And secondly, also from the regulation side, it almost feels like criminals in our own country.

For the longest time, we were earning in crypto and we had to go in some bullish or main market main then get some some very shady way get it. Sorry, this is on record. Hope the government doesn't come. But see again, you're always like you're being criminal for not doing any criminal type of activity. But there was that there is there are those two hurdles in the second category.

Uh yeah, I I agree. I think to double down Denver's point, right? Uh sitting in India and building for the world, I think you know, like one of the things that I've seen is the the startups that become more successful when they do this is um when they have like really good global network, right? Uh they have connections across the globe, good access because I've I've seen that being like a difference in like, okay, the startups that do well out there in the world versus the ones that do not. The ones who have that crazy good network, good access always end up doing better versus a lot of Indian startups who think they may be building for the world end up just working on, you know, an X for a Y chain sort of a model more than, you know, like anything very novel and original.

So, one of the things I would love for every founder or you know, like other ecosystems here to you know, to do more is create more global pathways, more interaction, more engagement with the global community, and we reduce the gap as much as we can. Um and there's another point that I'd like to touch about what we started this discussion with with which is why aren't the dev counts converting into startups? I think another one major reason is access to risk capital. Now, the ones here, we know how difficult things has been. So, there are two ways to raise capital, right?

There's you You it from the public market, and private market. Let's touch upon private market. This is your VCs etc. But because of regulations being tough, the web two VCs have hardly been putting in money. Yes, they have been earlier, but right now how many VCs have been putting money, you know, enough.

So, this sort of leads to lesser experimenting, lesser risk capital being available, and then final the results that we see. Another way to raise funds, that's the second way, is the public market. Now, here's an important thing I want to address is uh I've generally felt that uh if you want to raise from the public market, you have to be good with narratives, as well as good with access or network. Um if because at the end of the day, you're convincing people from different parts of the world to believe in the project that you're building, and you have to be good at storytelling. Indians have generally been good very good at product building.

Uh but when it comes to like narratives etc., this is where we become weaker. Uh so, I think that's one of the areas that we need to focus on. And number two is having that kind of access, right? Like again, when you're raising from public market, then you need to know people, listing managers from exchanges, uh people from market makers, etc.

, from across the world. And that is where I feel That's why I keep saying that, okay, if someone had more exposure to the global markets, especially in countries like US etc., where there's so much risk capital available, and there's so much more innovation happening, I think that sort of can close the gap. So, this is just my opinion that, okay, maybe like more risk capital being available for people here could have led to more number of startups coming out of India.

Yeah. Uh I think in like going back to today morning when Parin uh Parin's talk also touched upon this. I think even if the capital does exist, it's at the end of the comes down to go and talk to your users. Is your product actually uh going to work? Is it not?

At the end it retention metric that he spoke of is a is a powerful idea especially

No, I agree. I I think in that market people will look at those things because now capital is abundant. Okay, what what do you do with that capital? But your you know, like there are just handful of VCs who are investing that too small sizes of fund. You know, that people are not getting enough opportunities to play the game firstly before they even think about users, right?

So, I think hopefully like maybe regulations opening up can

Yeah, so for India that that's that's a little bit of a blocker, right? The regulations bit. And hopefully along the way by the time of Def Con we make some progress and at Def Con for sure. I'm much more bullish on people sitting in India and building for the world because this once you understand what kind of once you understand a market lines landscape and understand what kind of problems that you can solve, I think Indian builders are uniquely positioned because here people are not afraid to get technical and get into the weeds, right? I have met like over the years now and even recently like we did a trip to Delhi before coming here and that was a reminder about how I met some really sharp builders and they really knew like they were solving like stuff like like infra even infra level stuff like on cross chain like bridges and some super like niche markets, but they they understood that there's a problem to solve.

They were not afraid to do that, right? So, the interesting thing is like in when you you about So, I start I have started thinking about crypto as open source uh finance, right? If you think about DeFi, it's just open source finance. Now, you go to a bank and everything like you give your money to a money manager and the money manage your money for it. But, it's sort of closed source.

Once it's out of your hand, you don't know what's happening with it. You just You're just trusting somebody to do something with your money and you hope they give you a good rate of return at the end, right? Uh but, then you don't have so much control over it. Here, what if like what if all of this is super open and you have instant access to global markets, right? Uh sitting in India like you can trade like, you know, um global stocks, right?

Yesterday, I was talking to somebody who was like uh trying to solve something for, you know, you can buy uh you know, you can buy like tokenized gold or metals, uh right? Uh and that's such a big opportunity, right? India already we know that uh India's so pop like recently I read a report that I think uh like India gold reserves are rival those of uh in Indian consumer gold reserves rival those of the US uh uh uh right? Uh US country itself, right? So, that is dependent on the regulations opening up more, right?

So, all the RWA opportunities in India would have to be tied to like

Well, if you want to sell to Indians, yes.

Uh okay.

Uh if you want to build global stuff, then you can, right?

Uh of course, yeah.

Yeah. So, like people like So, I was talking to people like Instadapp and all, they ended up because they were below 18, they were using DeFi before they would started using TradFi because the TradFi you need like the banks and all would just ask so many questions. They're like, "Hey man, I don't have so much patience. Uh that's why I'm more bullish on like uh the Gen Z uh folks. They They're lack of patience might be uh uh might be the thing that we need, right?

To innovate. And uh there's so many things that people are thinking about. Even things like tokenization, right? I was having a chat with Nidhi and we were so happy when we were like, "Okay, there is this MP who's talking about tokenization, right?" And like Raghav Raghav

[music]

Yeah, so it's more about defining this problem statements, I think. Even with with Yeah, I mean, you can make a lot of opinions about what politicians say, but I think the framing was right. Like, you know, India has a lot of land assets. What if we can tokenize it, right? And then if you think about tokenize it, yes, crypto is good architecture for doing that, right?

So, that can be part of the Agreed. Okay, so I think we should just move to one or two other topics for the last 15 minutes that we have. One is regulations. Um before we probably like jump into, okay, like what is the hindrance that it's causing for crypto, maybe just for those who may not be fully aware, I'm just going to like quick- quickly give you a glance of um what regulations in India look like, right? There are four key events that you have to remember, which was from 2018 to 2020, there was a crypto ban, right?

This is by the RBI, which was which was lifted by the Supreme Court in 2020. And then in 2022, uh taxes were introduced. We have 30% taxes and gains, 1% TDS, all of that. Then 2023 crypto becomes a little I mean the FIU comes in and they're like, okay, you know, we need to regulate all the exchanges from outside. And 2023 same year for the G20 presidency that India led, they did bring up this topic saying that, oh, we should all collectively thinking about making, you know, some regulatory framework.

So, we came from almost, you know, like a straight-up ban to like slightly better position. I mean, it's not the best position. 30% tax All of these are sin taxes, right? This is what like gambling [music] probably gets. But so, now just coming to you guys, so this is the background that we have.

How much of a hindrance do you think there is because of regulations? Where exactly is it affecting founders and builders and Web3 through unlocking in India?

Yeah, from my perspective I'm just like people don't want to deal with uncertainty, right? As a So, as a founder especially your number one like you have to deal every day you wake up and there's so much uncertainty, right? Like you you don't know whether you have whether you can be whether in 3 months time you will be able to pay your employees your salary they're they're they're making plans based on that. You don't know what your competitors are doing. So, you so you you think, okay, I should maybe I should keep a track on that.

So, so you have to do all of those things. But at the same time if you are also in another fear that, oh, like I'll be working in the middle of this like I will have some sort of government entity come in and like shut my shop down or freeze my bank account, right? That's the first thing that

You have to move to Dubai.

Yeah, then then I just like yeah, like welcome to Dubai, habibi, right? Like I just do do that. Um Um but yeah, that that's also but now the Dubai is also like a problem if like I can't my plane can't land in Dubai. I don't know what I do. Uh so so so that that that the regulations are causing these kind of problems.

If there's some sort of certainty uh then it will take a lot of load off uh load of founders' head minds.

Um

What what what do you think the regulators are looking for? Like do you have like would you

Um I don't know how to say this nicely, but there there's a thought that uh has come to mind and we have discussed this also. I feel like Indian regulators and the Indian uh public sector government ecosystem has a way of like pulling down to you pulling you down to their level of mediocrity. Sorry to say, but uh I feel like innovation in India is is is really dying because of this gravitational pull towards mediocrity. It's it's it's really sad and the regul- the lack of uh stricter regulations and all of these add to it and it Okay, we understand it's a cap- capital control economy at the end of the day and you have to regulate it, but uh this lack of regulation of the stricter regulations is just uh makes it even worse. And so innovation in India has never been like in my perspective seen it very closely is that it's not about creating something new or something that's creatively dis- disrupts uh the system, but it's something that just replicates what is already happening and we give you scale.

I feel like that that's what it has come to be.

why Yeah, like that's the point that Daniel was starting with saying that then people stop looking at Indian native problems and solutions. Now you're just solving for the world because regulations here are you down, right? Yeah, and I think another point that came to my mind is this also discourages good strong talent from the web two space, be it founders, developers, to come venture into this because who wants to get into this ambiguity, right? Like, okay, you may end up building a product today. What happens after 3 years, 4 years?

Like, your time Is that the best use of your time? So, yeah. It is issue, and I think the capital thing is another thing. Imagine it just unlocks all the capital readily. Right now, all of that capital is just not coming into where it should.

I mean, if you look at the startup market in India otherwise, it's insane. We're We're the We're the third largest startup ecosystem in the globe in the globe. We have what? 125 unicorns. That That's That's how big we are.

Uh that's how much money there is uh even from the VCs, etc. So, it's just because of regulations that it's not flowing this side.

Companies that have made it big have to have the blessings of uh the the government and big people in the government. And in every sector, you become in the newspaper, now the semiconductor space as well. Uh my brother-in-law is a chip developer, and he is extremely into semiconductor. He came back to India from the US after 10 years thinking that he'll start his own company here. Had a really horrible time because all of the contracts, everything is going to the big fours, the I mean, the Tatas or the uh whoever.

The name it them. And you see it in this in this space as well. And it's again the same thing. The chips that they're making with these is is there's nothing new in this technology. It's what has been It's like a Starbucks Starbucks-ization of uh innovation in India.

Just get that concept, you have to download scale Carlo. That's it. Yeah.

But I think the the fix is here, right? The what sort of fixes should come from regulation perspective? Uh I think uh I mean some point one has to be the tax. It has to just be normal, right? Like just any other thing.

And clear distinction between how do you regulate like a service provider who's an intermediary who holds sets of people versus regulating a protocol who has no control over like code, right? I think some of these Is there any other point that you can think of that can make it I don't know like banking access? Banks should never say like no to crypto companies when they go because there's still concerns about it, right? Indian banks not being okay with oh you're a crypto company.

Like I think I think uh I was I was having a chat with uh somebody who's uh experienced with uh uh with all with with e- especially in the fintech space, right? Uh because if you think that uh like it's just a crypto problem, even fintechs fintechs face uh regulatory problems, right? Uh yeah, so like uh crypto is like just added layer of difficulty. So I was talking about fintech this one like so they were also like uh hey, the government is not opposed to things in general. They just don't probably don't understand it, but if you if you tell them clearly this is your benefit and this is how it will help the people.

If you can make a clear enough case, uh and then you also have to have the patience to have extended dialogue, then maybe there's a chance that they will uh listen, right? And that's why I'm I'm super bullish on Devcon being the shelling point for these conversations.

speaking of this city, we need to bring in some central government personnel, etc.

Yeah. So Yeah, that's what I think about

Okay, so just closing thoughts now uh is on um Okay, so what can be some of the things that can unlock uh the Indian crypto scene to the next level? Regulations one thing we just spoke about.

Sure. Uh like I I am more bullish on like uh like providing actual benefit to people. Like if you if you can use uh if you can like we can build products which provide access to Indian users to like uh you know broader capital markets. That's one thing. Uh tokenization of real world assets and stuff is also uh other things.

Lot of non-financial use cases in the public sector. Uh you know what if you just want more transparency on how you know your municipal budgets or something are used. Uh stuff like that. Uh so we start adding value to people and then we'll see uh some results. Uh overall despite everything I think uh we got a little gloomy talking about regulations.

But overall I'm super bullish on uh India's crypto story, right? Uh and I think that was the main reason why I was like okay when I thought that there's a chance to get Devcon to India then we like super the community rallied to actually uh do it, right?

Yeah, I mean uh not to paint that gloomy picture at all, but there there is so much happening here already in India. We uh we have many of our friends coming to India. We're getting delivery in like 3 minutes, 7 minutes. You're using UPI. Our entire life is on in our phone.

My banking is on my phone. Even everything is on our phone. We're interacting with commercial apps. So it's the place to be for sure. It's moving fast and Devcon coming to India is also great for that.

Uh I think what can take the crypto story of India to the next level is uh something that we have been also discussing is what use cases of this technology exist and that's something you all should also it's an open invitation. Please start like think about this tweet about this like think about it publicly like what are the use cases that this technology can have in India and use Devcon as a platform come prepared with all these questions homework out. You know so that is definitely a open question and it's an exciting question also filled with opportunities and the sky is the limit and we can really create something that's useful impactful and we already have 1.4 billion people you also feel warm the next billion we we we have it here already. So it's just about us thinking about thinking out of the box which I think Vitalik by the way has been tweeting and tweeting and really it's been lovely to read his recent tweets.

He's been saying so much about how to think in a chaotic area versus a stable area and you should read that tweet of his chaotic area basically like Kali Yuga we are in that Kali Yuga phase where everything has become you know conflict-ridden and all of that and he is he's really spoken about how to rethink our way of building towards building products that focus more on collective voice consensus building. Don't give up on democratic things. So those are some directions in which we can think about use case. I know Denver is also been thinking about doing a use case

We want to launch something called a like a use case sort of project Ethereum use case project where we sort of map out all of use cases for India specific problems and of course we just going to initiate it and then we're going to crowd source it for people to contribute and really map out like what sort of use cases make sense uh from an India perspective and then that hopefully then point developers to that that sort of problems that here are problems that you should solve, right? And then once we do that I think I think we'll unlock a lot.

Yeah. I agree. I think one or two points for me is one is I think the the brain drain needs to stop. Like I mean talent drain right? Like people have who are building right now in the existing these guys cannot leave, right?

So I think that'll be super helpful and then um um what else?

Yeah.

So pretty much

Do we have time for audience questions or not? Do we have time?

We have 4 minutes.

4 minutes. Okay. Just one or two questions if anybody wants.

Or thoughts.

Or any any general thoughts.

Oh, then

Hey guys, good panel. Thank you for speaking on your thoughts about India's crypto story. On top of your head, what are some of the use cases India specific which you think folks should be building for the EthMumbai hackathon which starts tomorrow?

Um for for the hackathon yeah, like if anyone wants to answer like they do this

Yeah, I think maybe just direction wise we can talk about right. Off late there's been a lot of discussions happening about financial use cases of crypto, non-financial, all the consumer, social space not working the way it should have. Um, I think it's too early like from my perspective I think it's just like too early to say that yes, the non-financial use cases will not work that crypto is not with me that it is nothing but just finance 2.0. I think it's too early to say maybe like things will evolve.

We'll see how things work out and maybe you never know right like when regulations come in it just opens up a different way. But from what's some of the things that I think there's been a lot of focus has been one has always been payments. But even when I think about payments and I mean there are like certain things that can be very important for India right like when we talk about like peer-to-peer here we don't need it because we have you. Yeah, understood. But when we need like cross-border we still need it.

But can we build that right now? Probably no, I don't know like with with regulations do you think? Because this like huge white space with everything that's got to do with like stablecoins and payments because we've seen that that is taken a very good adoption off late right like among all the other cases that has gone like that's skyrocketed. Some of the other things can be I don't know if these are I mean India focus solution I find it a little tricky because even when I think about RWA which is which opens up like an entire gamut of things that we can build but again you'll think about like regulation like oh should I even really think about tokenizing Indian stocks or Indian real estate or Indian I don't know other things.

Yeah, I think there are certain things in the non-financial domain like I don't know like we already have like 300 million plus records on chain, apparently, according to some data that I someone told me yesterday. So, these are land records that are already on chain. There's a lot of scope in the public health sector also. Like, there are people doing like collecting sensitive data, but now we have evolved tools like ZK and everything that can help bring that data on chain so that these these are like malnutrition data is very political. They you will have a government tomorrow saying that don't do I was at the other end of that the government telling you can't use that and we can't publish the data.

I had to delete it because it was in an Excel sheet. But, now you have like ZK that can help solve that at some level. So, then just think like totally out of out of there are there are many other domains beyond finance or supply chains or anything. I think thinking in those lines will help also.

I think okay, first thing First thing is that one is just from a hackathon perspective, you should try and solve problems that you that you are naturally interested in.

Yeah, from a hackathon

That you should do. If you are thinking more about use cases and like more such serious topics, I would say think of a use case. Let's say you're thinking land records or like something to do with health. You have 3 days. The first thing if if you're thinking about health I would want you to go and visit a hospital or a public health

Yeah.

uh place, right? And then talk to talk to people and only then build, right? Otherwise, if you don't want to do that, hackathons are totally fine to build like just fun experiences for you and your friends, right? So, if you can build fun consumer experiences, uh you can even do that, right? Um that could be cool stuff like, you know, it can be even simple problems like, you know, you you set up like you set up like sort of bet markets with your friends.

Uh when you do stuff like that. You can build fun stuff like prediction markets, but that that won't solve any real problems from an India perspective. It'll just be fun, and then you can think if enough people find it a delightful experience, you can think about scaling it. Right?

Yeah, I think uh one of the things I just like to add here is just connecting to Denver's first point where he was talking about Indians building for the world. Indians can do that because on the other side, regulations sort of like pulling us down when you focus on it. So, this is not an advice or suggestion or anything, but this is my point where I feel that uh even when we were investing at Hash Merchant, uh the the first few years we were thinking of like focusing on founders who build for India. And then we saw that, okay, this is probably not going anywhere because regulations are playing even a harder, you know, like it's a big challenge. Then we sort of like eased that up a little saying that, okay, we don't just build for India.

Like, let's look at founders who also build for the world. So, the question that you asked is a little tricky because when you say what can we build for India? Well, just like how Nidhi said and Denver said, there are so many things you can build, but can it be a use case for you right now? Can it become a business that can you know, like have revenue going on and sustain you? That I'm not sure.

Maybe it depends then there's, you know, that's why I think it's so important for regulations also to catch up. I'm I'm glad that US is taking some sort of uh lead and I think uh we also could, so you guys should really try hard to bring the government officials for Dev to Devcon.

Okay.

Perfect.

I think we're out of time.

Yeah, I think we're done. We're done. Thank you so much for being a very patient audience, guys. I know it's been a long day. Thank you.

Thank you.

Yeah.

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