Nikhil Sethi, MD, Zuvomo

Apart from being at ease with executing multiple roles and responsibilities related to marketing and management, Nikhil has a proven record of spearheading successful funding campaigns since 2017. He is presently the Director at Zuvomo and Advisor to 20+ blockchain startups, including Morpheus.Network, Vulcan Forged, Drops NFT, and more.The long list of Nikhil’s accomplishments includes working with the top Dapps, launching 50+ tokens, NFT games, exchanges, crowdsales and Defi products that raised upwards of $500m. After completing his Bachelor’s Degree from Delhi University, Nikhil pursued his PGD in International Studies from Mumbai University before handling marketing and Building community-based assets aimed at user acquisition, engagement, and retention for some of the finest brands in India and abroad.

 

Businesses across the globe are expanding their operations in different parts of the world to build a global customer base. When companies aim to serve clients globally, encountering a specific problem can disrupt the entire working process, affecting companies’ business significantly. Getting rid of obsolete practices is vital for businesses to achieve the desired results. This is high time to adopt groundbreaking technologies to make business operations more efficient. Faster international transactions, timely cross-border shipments, transparency and traceability are the need of the hour. Blockchain technology carries the potential to bring the necessary disruption in business operations.

Blockchain can be leveraged to solve multiple problems that businesses face today. Before we delve deeper into that, let’s understand some of the critical issues businesses face.

  • Transactions: In the present system, third-party institutions have a crucial role in most payments. The involvement of third-party financial institutions increases the chances of fraud, payment delays etc. Companies can use blockchain technology in their payment system to avoid delays and other time-consuming processes. Thanks to the decentralized nature of blockchain technology, international transactions are completely secure.

According to the World Bank, the average for sending payments globally is 7%. In the present scenario, if a company in one country wants to send money to another country based in another country, the bank in the former country will have to partner with the concerned bank in the other country for the transaction. Once the bank receives the payment, it will transfer the amount to the recipient. This is a time taking process.

Intermediaries like banks and other financial bodies still play a key role in financial transactions.

With blockchain, there’s complete transparency in financial transactions. Blockchain stores every transaction in a secure distributed ledger. Once the transaction is recorded in the ledger, the receiving party has access to the payment. The elimination of intermediaries is one of the key benefits of using blockchain technology for payments.

According to an estimate by Deloitte, using blockchain for business-to-business and person-to-person payments will save  40% to 80% in transaction costs. The average time for these payments is reduced drastically from two to three days to merely four to six seconds.

Another major use case of blockchain in the banking industry is the swift KYC process. Banks are rigorously testing blockchain technology to replace the traditional document submission process with a digital process. According to a report by Bank of America, leading banks like JPMorgan and Citi have already started using blockchain technology. According to research by BofA analysts, JPMorgan, Citi, Wells Fargo, US Bancorp, PNC, Fifth Third Bank, and Signature Bank are among the leading banks using blockchain technology.

  • Supply Chains: Global supply chains are getting intricate with every passing day. The challenges in the global supply chain include long lead times, shipment delays, complicated logistics operations, cash flow management, poor data management etc. The involvement of intermediaries and thousands of pages of documentation adds to this complexity. Counterfeiting is like a plague affecting every business in the global supply chain. According to a study, Counterfeit goods cost global brands more than $232 billion in 2018. According to an estimate, the automotive parts industry suffers losses worth $2.2 billion per year due to counterfeiting. The pandemic has unleashed havoc on the global supply chain over the past two years, with a shortage of shipping containers and workforce adding to the problem. Time demands disruption of global supply chains to shift from obsolete practices to new technologies. Companies can leverage blockchain technology and other groundbreaking technologies like IoT and AI to automate supply chain operations. This involves the replacement of paperwork, manpower and intermediaries with smart contracts. Emerging companies like Morpheus.Network, Everledger, Blockverify, Openport and Provenance are using blockchain to help businesses make their supply chains more efficient. These startups help companies across the globe automate their supply chain processes to cut losses and achieve efficiency. From authentication of processes to cross-border transactions, every individual process is being automated.
  • Data Security: Data security is an emerging challenge for businesses with hackers targeting small and enterprise-scale businesses all over the world. Most businesses currently store their data in the form of cloud data in centralized storage units. Centralized storage units are prone to hacking. Blockchain can be used to strengthen the security of cloud data storage. With decentralization being a key feature of blockchain, data will be stored across nodes in a network with no dependency on a single unit. In distributed blockchain data storage, redundant copies of data among different nodes are stored on the network so that there is no data downtime.
  • Data Storage: The data storage requirements of businesses today are much more than a decade ago. Big Data poses a significant challenge to the storage capacities of modern data centres. According to an estimate by IDC, the world will have 163 zettabytes of data to store by 2025. The cloud storage capacity that we have is not enough to keep this data. Thanks to the decentralized and distributed nature of blockchain technology, these storage challenges can be overcome easily. Big data will have to be fragmented into small parts and to be stored on the blockchain. Each data fragment is encrypted before getting uploaded to the blockchain.

Data storage is one of the industries where blockchain technology can have a significant impact. There are a lot of startups that are leveraging blockchain technology to disrupt the decentralized data storage industry. At present, businesses largely depend on cloud storage for storing their data. This involves official data, sensitive information of clients and users and other important data. Cloud storage has made the lives of businesses easy in a lot of ways. But, they are prone to several risks, including cyberattacks. While centralized data storage has a lot of benefits over decentralized data storage, the industry is dominated by big players. With big players having a virtual monopoly, it’s difficult to hold the companies accountable for data security. The absence of encryption makes sensitive data prone to cyber-attacks.

In this scenario, blockchain can play a key role and emerge as a more secure data storage alternative. Leading companies like BBVA, Barclays, HSBC, Visa, Unilever, Walmart, Ford and DHA are using blockchain for various operations including data storage. The impact of data loss on businesses can’t be undermined. According to the National Archives & Records Administration in Washington, 93% of companies that lost their data center for 10 days or more due to a disaster, filed for bankruptcy within one year of the disaster. 96% of all business workstations are not being backed up, states Contingency Planning and Strategic Research Corporation. Research firm Gartner found in an analysis that 50% of all tape backups fail to restore.

Startups like Cryptyk, Storj and SelfKey have realised the gravity of the situation. These startups are leveraging blockchain technology to disrupt the data storage industry. The aim of these startups is to provide secure, decentralized cloud storage to businesses around the world.

Final Word

Blockchain is a groundbreaking technology that is transforming the way businesses operate. From international transactions to shipment delivery and shipment status, individual business processes can be automated by integrating blockchain and other groundbreaking technologies. Companies can save millions in data storage, data security, supply chain management and government operations by leveraging blockchain technology and other groundbreaking technologies.

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