By
Bhushan Akolkar
April 30th, 2024
A report shows that India is the largest emerging Web3 market, with 35 million accounts on exchanges, and a 300% rise in developer share.
The Web3 ecosystem in India has expanded over time and now has at least 1,000 startups offering varying services in the country, according to a Tuesday report from Hashed Emergent, an early-stage venture capital fund focused on Web2 and Web3 firms. The report highlights continuous progress in India’s Web3 market, making the country a fierce competitor in the global landscape.
Hashed Emergent’s “India’s Web3 Landscape 2023” report was written and published with analyses and highlights jointly provided by the company and partners such as Coinswitch, KPMG India, Kratos Gaming Network (KGen), and Devfolio.
India’s Web3 Developer Share Jumped 300%
The country’s share of blockchain developers jumped impressively to 12% in 2023 from 3% in 2018. Although the United States has 26% of all Web3 developers, India’s count is noteworthy because its share of developers rose by 300%. The report pinpointed Bengaluru as an emerging hub for the country’s Web3 industry.
Hashed Emergent’s report contains more insights about India’s Web3 market. For instance, despite the increase in developer activity and blockchain market share, India’s Web3 funding fell 81% between 2022 and 2023, from $1.4 billion to about $250 million. Specific numbers also show a decrease, from 62 Web3 deals in 2022 to 47 in 2023.
The joint report states that the finance sector initially dominated funding in India’s Web3 market, particularly with crypto exchanges. However, this changed in 2023, with more attention on infrastructure projects. The Head of Web3 at KPMG India, Krishna Tyagi stated:
“Blockchains have enabled various innovative use cases such as DeFi, Real World Assets tokenization, Self-Sovereign Identities, Track & Trace etc, which were not possible earlier. We are continuously innovating and participating to develop the ecosystem and help our clients leverage the power of blockchains.”
Unfortunately, the number of funding rounds decreased, especially for subsequent funding. This happened because the founders decided to cut costs and suspend additional funding following a challenging global economy.
So far, the top Indian exchanges have more than 35 million trading accounts, making India the number one country for on-chain adoption for emerging markets in 2023 among more than 150 countries. The report shows that about 75% of all users of Indian centralized exchanges (CEXs) are younger than 35 years old. Indian traders generally prefer Bitcoin (BTC) and Ethereum (ETH).
Non-Finance Web3 Adoption
There is also quite a lot of activity in Web3, apart from finance. For instance, 29% of respondents noted that they spend more than Rs 1,000 ($12) on Web3 games, more than double of the 10% recorded for Web2 games.
Furthermore, there is recorded interest from large entities like Infosys and Eros, looking into Web3 participation. In addition, more than half of all Indian state governments are designing or deploying blockchain-based initiatives.
CoinSwitch Ventures Investments Lead Parth Chaturvedi highlights two conclusions from the report. Firstly, Chaturvedi assures that Indians are actively trading and investing in digital assets regardless of the recent prolonged bear market. He also notes that Indians are continuously launching Web3 startups in the country despite limited capital inflows and inadequate regulatory clarity.