Namaste Web3 initiative gets started with the Bangalore event

Namaste Web3 aims to educate the Indian public about the potential and challenges of Web3 technology as it grows in India and globally

By Shashank Bhardwaj

Published: Feb 2, 2023 05:51:56 PM IST

Updated: Feb 2, 2023 06:00:17 PM IST

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A group shot from the Namaste Web3 event initiated by CoinDCX and Forbes India.

Namaste Web3 is an education and awareness drive initiated by CoinDCX and Forbes India. It aims to reach every corner of India, and hopes to ignite a spark of revolution by engaging with enthusiasts and entrepreneurs across the nation.

The 10-city event was launched on January 28, 2023, in Bengaluru, and will travel to cities including Mumbai, Indore, Ahmedabad, Delhi, and Pune, among others. These events will bring together prominent leaders from technology, BFSI, and other influential fields to share their knowledge and insights.

The first event, focussed on the theme of "Taking Web 3.0 to the Masses," hosted nearly 200 people and was met with tremendous enthusiasm. The 200 participants largely comprised developers and startup professionals. The discussions around Web3 infrastructure, in particular, generated much excitement, highlighting its critical importance in the industry.

While delivering the keynote address at the event, Sumit Gupta, Founder & CEO of CoinDCX, emphasised on the importance of education and awareness in driving adoption and innovation in Web3.

Sumit said, "Namaste Web3 is not just an event; it's a movement. 2022 was a tough year, but I have personally observed and learned that real building happens at this point. I genuinely believe that 2023 to 2025 is going to be an inflection point in Web3."

The keynote was followed by a panel discussion on DeFi in web3 and how DeFi is paving a way forward for web3 through the intersection of centralised and decentralised approaches. The discussion was moderated by Manisha Jain, Editor - Commodities & Currencies for CNBC-TV18. “Education and discoverability are big problems in DeFi. We need to focus more on educating people and make discoverability easier within DeFi, ” said Ravindra Kumar, Founder & CEO, FrontierWallet.

The second panel discussion talked about empowering the next generation of web3 developers and how to overcome challenges and fill the gaps in developer tools and infrastructure. It was moderated by Rohit Jain, MD, CoinDCX Ventures. “What I keep hearing from the global web3 community is that while India has phenomenal developers and builders in the web3 space, the market in India can be a little bit of a challenge,” said Rohit Jain, while pointing out that even web2 companies built out of India have had their fair share of challenges.

The panel discussions were followed by a presentation by Kavya Prasad, Founder, Lumos Labs, where she explained how developers and web3 companies can harness the Lumos metaverse. Next in line were the workshops, the first was presented by Prashant Maurya, Co-Founder & CEO, Spheron, where he talked about accelerating dApp development and explained the quirks of building dApps with Spheron's Decentralised Hosting Solutions.

The second workshop was presented by Pranjal Bhardwaj - Developer Relations - Algorand Foundation, where he talked about building dApps with Algorand. Pranjal also talked about the infamous blockchain trilemma.

The event finally concluded with a vote of thanks from Neeraj Khandelwal, co-founder, CoinDCX Ventures. “This is our initiative to make India a global leader on the web3 front,” concluded Neeraj on an optimistic note.

You can watch the whole coverage of the event here.

The next event in Namaste Web3, themed "VISION OF A $5 TRILLION INDIAN ECONOMY: IS WEB3 INDIA'S NEXT BIG THING?," is planned for Delhi in March.

Shashank is the founder of yMedia. He ventured into crypto in 2013 and is an ETH maximalist. Twitter: @bhardwajshash