India as a Developer Powerhouse | KBW2023

[Applause] thank you for the introduction Jenny and it's great to be here good evening everyone uh I am shubam uh an investment associate at hashed emergent and we are a web3 fund that focuses on Emerging Markets particularly India uh before we jump into uh the discussion I'd request uh each panelist to introduce themselves and uh their respective Ventures Ram maybe we can start with you y thank you sham uh my name is uh RAM I run router protocol rou protocol builds cross chain interoperability infrastructure um hey guys I'm Arjun I head ecosystem at mantle uh mantle network is an ethereum L2 uh chain and we've built a modular chain where we use the op stack along with IG layer so we went live last month so so that's that's a quick brief about mantle hey guys this is anik here I'm one of the co- founders of B economy B economy has been working in the ux space for Last 5 Years now uh starting off with meta transactions and like most recently uh dabbling down around Theon obstruction ecosystem for the last two years awesome uh thank you so much guys uh before we jump into the web3 specific questions I'd like to set some context around India's uh Journey from being a back office to a front office uh over the last 25 years when it comes to exporting technology uh earlier it was majorly major uh big tech companies coming to India setting up their business processing Outsourcing units where most of the tasks were uh quite transactional such as HR related tasks accounting tasks Etc and over the last 25 years we've seen a lot of big tech companies globally coming to India and setting up their R&D centers now including Facebook Google and uh even Samsung so uh before we jump into to the V specific questions Ram if you could just help us understand what have been the key factors that have left to uh India being considered as a developer Powerhouse and anik and Arjun you can add to what Ram says yeah I guess the uh you know when you you grow up I guess this at least my generation there two options uh you become an engineer or you become a doctor or you're a failure so I guess uh I it's changed for now for uh the current generation a little bit but I think there's been a uh focus on the stem education uh track um that was one and then the U cost Arbitrage the cost efficiency has always been a big thing to start off uh obviously you can't compromise in the quality so that's how the whole it export Outsourcing boom started where you know a lot of the banks have their knowledge centers in uh IND not just it but even back office uh financial analysis the JP Morgans the well faros all these guys have huge knowledge centers in uh Bangalore and Hyderabad and Mum and all those places uh so yeah it's been a the focus on the stem education just a large sheer large numbers in terms of the demographic a lot of young population and uh just a global uh Trend towards reducing costs and then I guess that continues uh uh in web3 sure I I think what's what's become very interesting about the Indian market right so I think what really changed the game was just access to the internet and having just cheap data in in a country like India where now people have access to all of this new information so for example if you're a developer typically if you're a developer anywhere globally you know if you had to get quality education for example you would have to go to some University right you would go to like a tier one University something like that but what the internet has done is it's leveled the playing field so even sitting at home for example you can get access to some of the best education out there you can be part of Builder communities where you can learn from 10y old people who've been in the industry for a long period of time so I think easy access to Internet has really changed the game for India and that's kind of what we see in web 3 as well is that if you're a web3 developer anywhere in the world you can be a part of this Global Community you can work together you can learn together and you can also earn together and I think this is like very gamechanging which is why we're very bullish for web3 um in India as well um and and because of all of this education available year on year you can see that developers are are sort of smarter they have more context on the space so that's kind of why so many funds including like you know hash who've been very kind to have like a captive India unit have been like scouting developers and investing in the space and uh and of course I must say that the success of protocols like like router and bomy polygon UNM Marshall Etc have also you know bought sort of the Indian developer to the global market where people feel that yes like these guys have the ability to build a billion dollar company um so I think I think the internet has been a game changer and and now that we're all part of this Global community so then it's a Level Playing Field and whoever is whoever's got the most hustle eventually is going to win the game so yeah yeah just adding to Arjun and Ram's Point here like uh I mean like Talent was always there right like uh in engineering India is still like one of the best ones in the world but what we lacked was exposure and money like uh like even like building like bpos and backend offices is not easy like 25 years ago like you know maintaining like engineering team of hundreds and all but what like last 10 12 years with the penetration of internet as Arjun rightly mentioned it was kind of a game changer overall and also just some flow of money like uh VC uh ecosystem in the India is just just starting right just got started last five six years ago but with just limited money and some exposure you know what what all India can do we have all seen right like companies like flip cart Uber Etc uh Ola just happened in the last 15 years so it just getting started I'll say like uh I think the VC ecosystem is developing in India uh the talent has always been there and it's just growing like you know so quite bullish in general like how things going to shape up in India uh just exposure and money was needed and I think I think we we get it now like I think there's no no shortage of money in exposure in India Arjun you mentioned about uh billion dollar companies being shied out of India and we've seen that in the SAS space as well where uh India holds a noteworthy position and that clearly shows India's ability to deliver Global products we've seen that with web3 as well so would love to hear your thoughts on where do you see India in the web3 adoption curve at the moment and what do you think can Propel that further so so in terms of web3 adoption so this is an interesting like if you look at some of the statistics right if you look at let's say centralized exchange volumes what you'll notice about India is that we've got a huge number of users so the volume may not be very high but the user count is very high and it kind of shows you that all the genz sort of um kids in in India and all all of the um working adults for example want to figure this out they want to figure out web3 they want to understand how they can invest how they can be a part of this community so there's already a great deal of adoption I think so so on the user side for example I I I see already like a very strong very educated mobile first kind of a market uh where there's already a great deal of adoption and I think once policy makers also see this and it's also interesting in India where the policy makers kind of understand it a bit there is a taxation system for crypto it's not a great transaction it's it's not a great system but it's there which means the government recognizes it and as time progresses and as we have better systems there'll be more adoption with respect to the billion dollar companies I think that's like super important as developers right so if you're a developer let's say sitting in some part of India and you see you know uh you see a b economy you see a router you see a polygon you kind of get inspired right as a developer you feel that hey if these guys can do it I can do it so that's why it's so important in web3 or in any space to have your Heroes right people you can look up to people you can emulate where you get that energy where you feel that yes I can also do this I can go out there and build a global company so I think that is now back like you can see the confidence is there um and uh and now I feel you know even like University students Etc feel that they have it in them to go out there and and build uh global companies um and I kind of see interestingly uh I kind of see a lot of that in Korea as well like so when I meet like a lot of like I've met like a lot of Builders over the last two days I hope to build a lot I hope to meet a lot more of them and I also see that as well that the average developer quality in Korea is also super high and more Korean developers and apps need to go out there and go Global and and become those Heroes so that like Korea also becomes in some sense a global Powerhouse versus you know being sort of uh being only in Korea or only in Asia AB so yeah I'll add something here you know in general when it comes to adoption uh we work very closely with developers uh so we kind of see like like a lot of hackathons like uh we see like most of the hackers coming from India so in terms of devop adoption it's insane like uh even in eth India last year there were like I think 25k people registered uh but what we we don't have right now is the user adoption and there's a reason for it right because most of the crypto applications that have been mostly adopted is majorly speculation sort of gambling applications and Indian mindset is not very much on that favor like Indian users are not like you know very much trading Focus or or gambling Focus but like with the Advent of more like b2c applications like web3 social gaming we'll definitely see like a lot of usage happening we already seeing like more like social applications coming from India in fact like we launched recently with fan tiger which is like kind of like Spotify of India and within like one day we got like I think 20K users uh just just just signing up so if if we see like more b2c nonp speculation type of application you'll see like more adoption happening from India and that's what I'm also very much looking forward in the next like uh 6 to 12 months from India Ram would you like to add something no I think uh these two gens covered most of it yeah I guess it's a question of a lot of large numbers right it's it's it's very easy to fall into this whole exceptionalism trap just it's 1.5 billion people and there's a nice demographic and there's a lot of folks that are doing great things in web 2 web 3 the you know the CEOs of these Google and uh Microsoft Etc so there are role models that uh Inspire everybody even uh a freshman a first year student at engineering college right and uh uh I guess the other thing is you know the stigma around uh as the economy sort of uh uh maturing uh there used to be a stigma around entrepreneurship right I mean you had to graduate you to get a job you to get married y this is a path was rolled out for you sort of the road map was set when you were born but I think that is also going away you know there are kids that are I remember 2012 13 uh in one of the iits this the were kids mining Bitcoin and ethereum and some of them s an exchange and yeah they they never uh worked a day but they're like uh you know ogs in their own way so so there there there a lot of flexibility in what we can do yeah it makes a lot of sense Ram Arjun andit I think one name which came across in our conversation of the last 10 minutes was polygon a couple of times and it's hard to not mention polygon when you speak about India and web 3 and I think that's inspired a lot of developers web2 developers to move to web 3 but would love to hear your thoughts uh starting with you anik on what are the other key factors that has inspired a lot of developers to start focusing on this new technology definitely I mean polygon has been the touch better for India for I don't know like 5 6 years now and uh I think one of the reasons why many projects are still uh you know in the space I think polygon plays like a very important part of it including by economy so uh hats off to them on all the effort that they've done from how you know like how humble starting they had like with no money and then like building like a multi-billion dollar company I me Jun is so probably my he is in like all the hard work there um I think what polygon kind of changes like before polygon like no like external foreign BC used to look upon any Indian project like it used to very it used to be very difficult to get the validation but that kind of changed you know overall when the polygon uh you know expanded the market and U you know kind of got adopted in the global ecosystem now I think the last sort of a bull market quote unquote like we saw like a lot of Indian projects coming up so the prospective of investors kind of changed totally before polygon and and how it was um and also like as I said earlier like Talent was always there it just needed like the right exposure and with polygon we we kind of got it um and uh I think what what's happening in the space right now is that infra is already like you know led by some of the guys like router bomy polygon but now we're seeing like more b2c applications coming from India so this is sort of an like interesting aspect that we'll be seeing the next couple of months from India uh yeah and and I think overall the ecosystem is also developing like uh you see like uh IB ibw like set up by you guys for the first time so all these things going to help us you know developing the ecosystem all together in the in the developer mindset from India Arjun would love to hear your perspective as well you've seen the Journey of polygon oh I mean all all the success was a was a team effort sometimes I I think I think I get like a lot of undue credit for the for the team's hard work um but yeah I mean like it just speaks to that point right like in any region or in any space you need someone to inspire you right you need a win you need a hero who inspires the next generation of developers to go and build something right you need a hero who sort of takes who sort of captures imagination of all the different VCS who then want to come to that region to invest you always need that and and we've seen this even in Silicon Valley right from like the 60s '70s when you know the first tech company started growing there which is when Silicon Valley became Silicon Valley I think polygon did that for India right so there was this time when you know people saw that you know a rack Tac team from India has managed to build like a $1 billion company you know and and has raised from some of the biggest VCS in the world like this is unforeseen for for the Indian ecosystem and and that inspired like like people like sandep JD Kanani anurag like you know the founders of polygon have inspired like this new entire generation of of developers who now look up to these guys and they want to be you know sort of they also want to build these companies and they have that confidence because because uh none of the founders I would say of polygon came from like super Blue Chip backgrounds or anything like that your normal guys who worked really really hard and and made it possible and and that inspires a lot of people and and what it also does is now I see that every VC wants to come to India and they're looking for the next sandep right so they want to find the next polygon and and I think that's great so that's kind of why I feel that for any space to succeed for any region to succeed you need to have like some not star figure somebody which can rally people investors Developers around a particular cause you know who can Inspire who can put that belief in you that you can do it so I think you know polygon managed to do that and then immediately we started seeing like you know by economy became billion dollar company router became a big company there's so many other big companies now and and every investor now has got kind of a beine for this for India trying to figure out okay like how do I find the next billion dollar company where's the next unicorn so so that's kind of why I feel like polygon in some sense changed the game and it's also responsible for like through its Investments Etc responsible for like holding up the Indian ecosystem and and now I see like other apps take up that responsibility so now others who built these billion dollar companies they are there in the market helping other developers succeed and so this is kind of where it's gone from one company to an ecosystem of companies all of whom are helping each other it's become a community and uh and I feel that once this starts happening then there's no turning back and then we will see like great things in in in times to come so so yeah so kudos to you know all the OG companies OG web stre companies of India for setting that base and now it's upon the new generation of Builders to like take it to the next level that's a great summary I will add one thing about polygon right I think it's uh and it's a lesson for all Builders out there um they actually truly innovated uh in the time because a lot of folks in fact a lot of good V at the time said you know why do you need an L1 why do you need U another side chain uh ethereum is going to scale right there's going to be sharding there's going to be this there's going to be that and at that point you going you guys are going to be redundant right but uh the crew sandip and JD and anurak they just you know they knew that that was that's going to take a while and yeah maybe ever and then they went ahead they sort of stuck to the plan and they got they sort of rode out that big 2018 uh crash Etc right and I think that's a big lesson for now it's very easy to Fork a uni or a compound go to a new chain and uh just be sort of ride that way for a bit but if you want to build build something enduring respective of where you are there has to be that element of innovation that is truly solving a problem so I think that's one big takeaway for us among the many takeaways on the from from the polygon story awesome uh thanks a lot for your responses uh anit you mentioned a couple of times that there's no dirth of talent India has the numbers uh was just reading through an electric Capital report on the developer Talent base which now states that India is number four uh when it comes to contribution of we3 developers what's actually stopping us from being number one and do you see uh India being uh holding a number one position when it comes to web3 contributions developer contributions as well yeah I think quite interesting question and uh something uh we uh we have been like observing very closely because like bonom is a very developer focused platform we work with majorly all the developers kind of building the space um um I think in terms of like numbers like number fourth or number fifth or whatever it is uh uh I think one thing we have seen is that um uh lot of young talent coming from India and uh due to exess of Internet uh we see like a lot of college students you know coming and hacking around projects uh that is probably like one of the reasons why I've seen like numbers bumping up because uh the engineering talent in India is I think one of the highest one in the world in terms of numbers so definitely like in any hackathon or any sort of you know event that's happening you'll see like maximum number of hackers uh majorly coming from in depth not maximum at least it's going to be like in the in the like top top three one or two firms one or two side side of things um what is lacking is uh is adoption it's like as I said right like uh if we have to reach from number four to number one it's just going to need like one or two killer applications and uh that is where you know we're going to see more develop more more and more like you know developers coming in building applications so uh yeah I mean like you know as RAM also mentioned like it's easy to fol unisoft it's easy to F RV and stuff but Indian developers are not kind of meant for that Indian developers are more meant for like b2c daps like that that's what we have scaled in the web2 ecosystem as well you've seen like Zat and you know Olas of the world so uh one killer app is going to coming and it's it's going to be changing the Dynamics and uh I'm already like uh I I I can I can like foresee it that happening uh already like major web2 play are kind of you know switching to web 3 uh we've already seen like one or two applications launching also so it's just like matter of time and one or two killer applications coming from from from from from the country that will change the Dynamics and uh easily in the next I think couple of years we can we can see that from number four to number one how much time it's going to take no idea but what it's going to take is like one or two killer applications from from from the country ajun would you like to add to that I think your answer would be some more sandep some more anit as well 100% we definitely need like a bunch more anik Kates and and and you know and and Rams to uh to take things forward but I think anik's absolutely right it's it's it's about so two things right so crypto in general needs a killer app I think in crypto we've reached this point where there are so many blockchains that there is more block space than there is applications so killer app has to come from somewhere um and luckily all the infrastructure like when you speak to folks for building infrastructure like infrastructure is in place as well um talking specifically about India yes India's got a big population so it's a b2c market so the way you need to build for is is b2c um I just think that the adoption to an extent is there so anik talked about fan tiger so you can see more and more like U um people who are from like traditionally web2 industry start to adopt web stre trying to figure out how to use tokens what to do and how they can like get more and more adoption so I think it's going to happen slowly slowly and then all at once where one killer app is going to come and it will then completely uh sort of change the game for everyone else um so so yeah I think finding that real killer application is is now key um for all of us I feel working together so yeah thanks Arjun also it's going to take like investors like you guys you know just to yeah we definitely need more hash emergence in the in the space yeah for sure uh RAM would would love to hear your perspective on what categories of products do you think would be shipped out of India so of course one is b2c applications which uh anit and Arjun mentioned about but any other categories that you see uh in India could actually uh dominate I mean it's the easy answer there is you know B to C but I I think that you know with web 3 you're building for a global market right and you so you could you could build a defi app you could build an nft app you could like route a build an infrastructure layer I think uh uh yeah there is no I don't think you can make a prediction on you know there's going to be a certain category of apps that's going to dominate that that's my sense um yeah I think uh because and and also sort of going back to your earlier question right I think uh it's not when you say number one to number four number four number one those are you you need two great apps rather than 200 copy care apps right so that's also the quality aspect to it um and then that sort of goes back to the whole culture around we we very good at engineering right I don't think we're very good at research because we we sort of uh fix it's it's the old Japan versus US debate right I mean Japan and Korea they got technology they set up these labs and the factories and the cars were turned out but the core Innovation still happened in the mits and the stanfords the same way I don't think and and it's also a function of the fact that you know VCS don't fund uh research in the Indian geography or anywhere outside the US you go to Stanford you have a sort of a p in the sky idea p in the sky idea and then you still get funded uh whereas in India you get funded for engineering so I think the research DNA is something that uh maybe funds like you can fix over the next few years for sure we we'll try our best on that front uh I think just in interest of time last couple of questions uh from my side so Arjun maybe you can take this first uh in web2 or rather just in Pure Play technology we saw lot of multinational companies Target the developer talent in India we're seeing that with F3 as well a lot of protocols trying to come to India a lot of ecosystems trying to build their presence in India uh what would be your advice to these Global projects how should they go about navigating the Indian web3 developer landscape you've done that with the couple of ecosystems so would love to hear your Insight sir great question um I would just say so number one it's obviously great that so many of these chains are coming which means that all of them recognize like India is a very important Market which I think is great for the space and for the Builder now coming to how would you target such a space and how would you go about solving this for the Indian subcontinent I think some of the basics remain the same so you have to double down on education I think you know internet is there that's great so you know if you do hackathons if you do Builder sessions you've got such a big Builder Community it's so easy to sort of get like a number of developers building on your chain so doing a lot of education is super important number two you know we need like let let's say more VCS uh you know to be who are willing to take chances on the on the Indian ecosystem right so you'll have lots of daps you'll find very talented Builders but then somebody has to step up and be willing to let's say put in that first check and be like okay let's take this idea to the next level so I think ecosystems who are able to do that like I said who are able to build those Heroes where for example let's say um so for example as mantle Network let's say I can if I can go there and I can Elevate two or three daps and then take them Global then everybody would want to then work with me because there' be like okay you know what like these guys can help us succeed so I think following some of the basics of of Education of investing in the space and being able to take like Builders and daps from India and take them Global and make them turn them into big companies Mentor them help them is is going to be how you have to really Target that ecosystem because just like what anik and R also saying like the some of the investment bit and some of the other stuff is still like not very structured of missing and if those few building blocks are in place then you can see like crazy level growth so that's kind of like would be my advice that you have to offer that 0 to 100 path to developers right and you have so it will require a little more handholding a little more extra effort and time but then the outcomes would be then uh you know incredibly uh sort of lopsided in the sense that you would have huge number of adoption huge number of developers so all your metrics Etc would be off the charts so that's kind of how I think about it yeah anit would you like to add to arjun's yeah I think in terms of like your question regarding what MNC should look for in India and how you know like developer ecosystem shaping up uh I would like probably agree to Ram's Point here like India definitely has like really good engineering talent and I think for any sort of role like P and front end you know solidity you get like I think really quality Engineers there uh but research is where like uh I would say like we still kind of lack behind and that is where you know we would need more exposure more more funding and also more uh you know sort of sessions there regarding how and what should be built for example you know like I was in SBC along with ram like recently U you know uh sort of stuff that uh people were talking about there we haven't seen something like this in India right like uh organizing more of that that quality event like in India would definitely help reaching us there so uh as of now like just keeping it short like if anyone is looking for India in terms of hiring look for good engineering Talent like devop qway backend you know we'll get like really quality Engineers but in in terms of like architectur level stuff maybe not right now we'll get there in sometime and that'll only happen by you know having more exposure there so yeah I mean that that's just advice because we also a developer Focus company and that's how we look at hiring as um yeah the other perspective here is you know if you're AP to s a lunch or anybody that wants to tap into the Indian market you know it's very easy to sort of have somebody in Dubai Singapore or even somebody in Bangalore and then they have an army of folks sort of spreading around the country going to colleges and doing the evangelism and that's all well and good but I mean if you look back if you look at that's something that I discuss with my head of growth aish all the time third row um you know as a platform do you need 100 projects spray and pre approach or do you want one or two really good projects right so and if and if you decide that you want two good projects you should just go to Bangalore hire guy there set up an incubator or whatever you want to call it and sort of make it within the context of web3 as much as possible get it as much in-house as possible and get that one killer app or the one or two killer apps and and that will then like happened with Terra right I mean you just had mirror and anchor those two were launched by the team and then 100 other apps came organically so instead of trying to spray and pray you might want to just hire a small team build a nice app and then let that speak for itself and let other folks be pulled in into that that's something that folks might want to consider awesome thank you so much RAM Arjun and anit for the answers makes a lot of sense uh it's been a great panel you've been a great audience thank you so much for joining us and have a great week ahead uh [Applause] [Music] everybody