The Delhi-based residential incubator Satoshi Studios is focused on blockchain startups across India and South-East Asia.
Following demonetisation, the e-wallets saw a sudden surge in India, and since then they’ve grown exponentially. Today, however, blockchain — a distributed database that maintains continuously growing list of records — seems to be name of the game. An article in Wired says that bitcoin has a market cap of $5 billion. There are also several merchants like Newegg, Dell, Expedia, Overstock and Microsoft who are accepting bitcoin as a possible form of payment for their product.
In a white paper on application of virtual currencies, RBI’s research wing, the Institute for Development and Research in Banking Technology, claims to have successfully concluded proof of concept (POC) studies using blockchain technology for trade finance applications.
The paper claimed that the POC was run in concert with the National Payments Corporation of India and banks like Citibank, Deutsche Bank and HDFC Bank. It isn’t just the large banks and corporations looking at blockchain; there are several startups cropping up in the space as well.
The beginnings
It was looking at this that 27-year-old Nikunj Jain, 26-year-old Sahil Baghla and 24-year-old Ayush decided to start Satoshi Studios, a blockchain incubator in Delhi. The first batch is set to start at the end of March.
Prior to launching Satoshi Studios, Sahil along with Ayush, both alumni of IIT Kanpur, had co-founded two startups, Bluegape and Murmur. Bluegape was started as a college dorm room project, and both the projects went onto raise multiple rounds of investments from over 30 investors. Nikunj, an IIT Delhi alumni, has been an angel investor at various startups.
The trio have in their startup experience worked with various bitcoin and blockchain companies. Nikunj adds that they were getting several funding inquiries. They figured that there is a huge demand for an incubator or an accelerator that can provide the initial seed fund, right guidance and a proper infrastructure.
These inquiries were primarily from India and South-East Asia. That is why Satoshi Studios was launched as an initiative to cater to the blockchain startups in the…