India, the South Asian nation with a population of 1.3 billion, is rapidly evolving in the Web3 space, embracing blockchain technologies at an unprecedented pace.
The partnership between Indian founded Polygon Labs and Indian conglomerate Reliance Industries gained significant attention this year when Jio Coins went live on the Jio Sphere Browser, marking a major milestone in India’s expanding Web3 landscape. Additionally, in a groundbreaking move, the town of Dantewada last week migrated over 700,000 land records to the Avalanche blockchain, further demonstrating India’s blockchain adoption.
Adding to this momentum, Hashed Emergent has predicted that India will have the world’s largest Web3 developer base by 2028. In its latest third edition of the India Web3 Landscape Report, the firm highlights that India’s Web3 ecosystem continues to strengthen, showing remarkable resilience despite global uncertainties.
Growing Web3 Startup Ecosystem in India
According to the report, India boasts the world’s third-largest Web3 founder base, with over 1,200 startups across various sectors.
Shedding light on emerging Indian start-ups in the world of Web3, Hashed reveals that over 12,000 startups are leading the innovation with Indian founders receiving cumulative funding of $564M in 2024.
This shows an astounding growth of 109% from funds raised in 2023. The nature of the funded projects include AI, Real World Assets (RWAs) and Staking Solutions. Few startups emerging in these areas include Kuru, CoinDCX, Kelp, TradeX, KoinX, Rabble, etc.
Web3 Indian Startups’ Funding
Further, the report reveals that the kind of Venture funds that are investing in these Web3 startups include a good mix of local funds, ecosystem funds and corporate ventures arms of leading exchanges, including Hashed and OKX.
Coinbase Ventures, Y Combinator, Animoca Brands, IOSG, and LD Capital, as well as homegrown Venture Capital firms such as Hashed Emergent, CoinDCX, PeakXV, Borderless, and Alpha Wave, are also aggressively investing in Indian projects.
Notably, the funding in the infrastructure and finance sector projects saw significant growth last year while the Web3 entertainment sector witnessed continued decline in 2024. With investment activity shifting from L1s/L2s projects in favour of AI infra-related projects, Indian Web3 projects in the respective field garnered over $437M in 2024.
Growing Web3 Developer Base in India
The Hashed report states that the country contributed 17% (the highest) of all new developers entering the Web3 space in 2024. With 12% of Crypto developer base, India is currently the second largest developer market which is 5% of the global Web3 founder base.
It further predicts that India is expected to leapfrog the US with the largest developer community by 2028.
A total of 11.8% of crypto developers are based in India, making it the world’s second-largest crypto developer base. In terms of contributions, data shows that 45.3% of Indian Web3 developers contribute code, 29.7% address bug fixes, and 22.4% focus on documentation. Gaming and NFTs account for 30% of developer engagement, while DeFi and RWAs contribute 26%.
Interestingly, most Indian developers are new and young to the Web3 space, with over 50% joining in the past two years and 85% under 27.
While Hackathons remain the main entry point for developers, global Web3 ecosystems are partnering with universities in Odisha, Bhubaneswar, Madras, and Kerala, introducing students to Web3 technology early to build within the ecosystem.
GenZ leads the Crypto Investors Base in India
The 2024 growth outpaced the combined growth of 2022 and 2023 as Indian crypto traders grew more sophisticated.
According to the repot, the country witnessed a 5x surge in meme coin trading volumes, showing the market’s appetite for emerging opportunities.
Gen Z makes up 35% of the crypto investor base, and two-thirds of the futures traders are under the age of 35. Notably, 1 in 10 futures’ traders are females, indicating significant headroom for growth among women. What’s impressive is that 59% of the Indian crypto traders are using stop-loss orders, showing sophisticated risk management.
Complex Regulatory Landscape Continues to Pose Challenges
India lacks a dedicated regulator for the Web3 sector leaving rooms for further improvements and growth in its growing Web3 Landscape.
While highlighting the existing complex regulatory jurisdiction in India, the report suggests that by adopting a disruptive Web3 regulatory, tax and policy framework, it can catalyze population scale on-chain innovation given positive political framing. It further highlights that since India lacks a dedicated regulator for the Web3 sector, the regulatory actions are often guided by perceived risks by the government.
Thus, India must overcome its negative Policy perception and instead incentivize the Web3 sector to grow and thrive.
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