Blockchain Lab
We help empower organisations to transform themselves, their clients and the society in a transparent manner
Businesses today are exposed to a rapidly changing complex environment. Such an environment demands that organisations pursue their operations in an accountable and transparent manner while complying with complex regulations.
That is where Blockchain comes in, as a key enabler to solve business problems, automate trust and inculcate greater degrees of transparency and traceability in business processes. The PwC India Blockchain Lab in Kolkata is a centre of innovation, ideation and extensive research that serves to empower organisations and set the stage for future growth by leveraging the disruptive power of Blockchain.
Our team comprises Blockchain certified professionals, business analysts and software engineering professionals who are equipped to deliver the appropriate solution using this new technology.
Activities
We work closely with clients to analyse their business model, associated challenges and business requirements. Our team of Blockchain professionals and business analysts probe the complexities of the business in terms of processes and stakeholders to determine if the business is suitable for Blockchain adoption based on our in-house, robust Blockchain feasibility framework. This comprehensive analysis enables us to draw up a Blockchain roadmap for the company, based on which we embark on the next stage of conceptualising a specific use case that would be beneficial for the company’s business process improvement.
If we find the client’s business model is mature enough for Blockchain adoption, we embark on the Blockchain use case development. In the process, we first decide on a few specific business problems that may be addressed using this technology. This is followed by scoring the priorities of these intended applications and finally zeroing in on one or more particular business problem(s) that require(s) immediate attention.
Our Blockchain certified professionals refine the selected solutions continuously before creating a blueprint for a Blockchain-based solution for this specific business problem. Often, this is accompanied with estimated benefits and a detailed value proposition that helps the client visualise the solution and its outcomes before its actual implementation.
This stage is one of the most important steps in the Blockchain journey. It involves iterative development of a full-proof prototype. The client is able to get a hands-on overview of the intended solution, navigate around it to see the intended benefits and check the flow of Blockchain in action. Generally, it takes 3 to 4 weeks of effort to prototype a particular use case. The prototype is intended to show the flow of transactions at an elementary level and later, changes in design or functionalities may be incorporated. This process of iterative development continues till the intended results are achieved.
Once the prototype satisfactorily reflects the client needs and requirements, the task of integrating that particular solution in the real day-to-day operating framework of the business begins. In order to scale up the solution, the experienced architects decipher the existing technical architecture of the client, the various legacy technologies and focus on the best method to integrate Blockchain with the existing system. Based on this foundation, the development team works on scaling up the solution and integrating it with client systems.
In the final stage, an iterative process of solution implementation begins where integration with existing technologies is seamless and any issue in execution or workflow of any module/ functionality is mitigated at the start.
Our experienced team of developers and quality assurance experts adhere to agile practices and work in tandem at this stage. Training of personnel on the use of the newly developed solutions is also executed based on client requirements.
Sectors
With hands-on experience in building innovative Blockchain applications for several industries, we are equipped to help clients with all their Blockchain needs. Our repertoire consists of a variety of use cases across sectors such as finance,oil and gas, telecom and healthcare.
- Public sector (Citizen Services)
- Healthcare
- Supply chain
- Insurance
Public sector (Citizen Services)
In citizen services, our solutions focus on automating trust in governance. Using Blockchain integration, we have embarked on a journey of creating a robust record of human data all through a citizen’s life-cycle from birth till death. This is meant to enhance trust across touchpoints all through the citizen’s life including admissions, marriage, employment and license registrations. We have envisaged a number of modules in this implementation, of which two - birth records and death records in Blockchain - have been rolled out for a municipality. Expanding the spectrum of Blockchain-based trust across other citizen services is one of our priorities in the days ahead.
Healthcare
Healthcare, as a sector demands the processing of humongous amounts of data on a daily basis with various challenges in supply chains, clinical trials and overall data management.
Use cases we have worked on include:
- Clinical trials: Our use case aims to enhance trust in scientific research. In the proposed solution, the data obtained at each stage will be immutable, with a single shared view. In addition, there will be a timestamp for each transaction so that there is no room for tampering with the trial data, and each outcome is authentic, thus encouraging more patients to undertake these trials.
- Patient data management: Currently there is no common, secure repository or records when it comes to patient data management. This results in loss of records, difficulties in tracing the medical history and an overall lack of trust. In order to mitigate such problems, our use case intends to create an immutable data storage for patient data that can be accessed with permission from the patient, with smart contracts to disburse benefits such as health insurance.
- Trade secret protection: Currently, various pharmaceutical manufacturers face difficulties in securing trade secrets, claiming copyrights, proving prior use, making defensive disclosures, enforcing confidentiality agreements and robust technology licenses. Our use case intends to solve these problems in the following ways:
- Viewing access controls to create visibility record of viewers; use of Blockchain to provide full-fledged immutable record of viewers for confidential documentation
- Protection of idea leakage through use of smart contracts
- Expected reduction in expenditure on litigation and existing efforts made to protect trade secrets
- Prove existence of any document by creating an immutable digital notary on Blockchain
Supply chain
Creating a robust supply chain to reduce bullwhip effect, optimise the supply chain metrics and reliably trace the flow of money, data and goods/services has been a pressing need across all industries. We have created an end-to-end Blockchain solution that deals with supply chain provenance, and also the procurement lifecycle starting from vendor negotiation to invoices. This is a product that can be implemented across industries and customised based on specific stakeholder problems and requirements of a company’s supply chain. Some of the supply chains we have dealt with in this regard are pharmaceutical, agri-tech and fast moving consumer goods.
Insurance
The insurance sector provides a plethora of opportunities for Blockchain, owing to a number of requirements namely, onboarding, underwriting, claims processing and fraud detection. Some of the use cases we have worked on for the insurance sector are :
- Claims settlement: Currently, frauds associated with claims is a major pain point in the insurance industry, with claims made against multiple policies held by different insurers. This makes it difficult to detect fraud unless the data is shared. We have envisaged a smart contract enabled Blockchain platform through which the entire gamut of processes from loss till settlement could be automated. Additionally, it disintermediates the system along with multiple handoffs and makes it more transparent by easing the identification of fraud and duplicate claims made in the system.
- Co-Insurance: Co-insurance, the practice of spreading insurance risks among multiple parties with a consortium between a lead insurer and follower insurers, has a number of pain points in the present system. These pain points are lack of ready availability of data between lead and follower insurers, lack of transparency in coverage, delays in brokerage settlement resulting from deferment in premium payment and overall information asymmetry.
In a Blockchain-enabled system, the co-insurance environment will be overlaid with a distributed ledger that leverages blockchain technology to drive consensus among participants. The solution will win trust and confidence among peers, resulting in increased consistency across multiple client data stores, drive automated payment with smart contracts decreasing discontent among the participants and disintermediation to create a robust and trustworthy co-insurance environment.
Blockchain applications
Our crowdfunding management system is a Blockchain-based crowdfunding platform designed to enable immutability and transparency. Every financial transaction is stored immutably in the system along with its timestamp. Any alterations made by any malicious entity is immediately traceable owing to the distributed nature of Blockchain.
Our solution uses Blockchain technology which can help store birth registration data in an immutable fashion with a time stamp at which it was created. Once the birth data has been put inside the Blockchain, it cannot be altered/deleted. The birth data can be verified by querying the Blockchain for which we have developed a user-friendly interface.
We are constantly on the lookout for new areas where Blockchain can solve existing problems or improve the existing architecture.Some of the solutions that we have in our pipeline revolve around financial services, auditing frameworks and data protection and contract streamlining across businesses.
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