Despite the challenges, Web3 startups and experts in India remain optimistic, and hope to see the transition from Web2 to Web3 within this "techade"
India is one of the fastest emerging countries in Web3 from a developer and provider standpoint. But there is still a long way to go in terms of adoption and user base.
Illustration: Chaitanya Dinesh Surpur
Fun fact: If Apple had not fired Steve Jobs in 1985, we may not have seen Web or Web3 today.
Jobs founded NeXT Computer after he was sacked from Apple. In 1989, he sold one NeXT machine to a computer scientist working at CERN, the European organisation for nuclear research. This move would forever change the world. Tim Berners-Lee invented World Wide Web (WWW) using this machine, and it became the world's first web server and ran the first web browser. The main purpose of Web 1.0 was to share information—it was read-only and excluded a large portion of the population as it was difficult to use.
This limitation prompted a Web 2.0 movement. Popularly known as the social web, Web 2.0 is something we experience on a daily basis through various internet companies like Google, Facebook, Twitter, Anchor and more. Everything was going fine until people started doubting the competence of these tech giants. A lot of them have been accused of selling user data, some have suffered security breaches, and others have attempted invading user privacy. All these concerns gave rise to Web 3.0 to give users back control of their data on the internet.
Still under construction, Web 3.0 is said to be the decentralised web. The idea here is to establish trust on the internet without the intervention of any central body like the government and large companies. This trust is established using blockchain technology, a decentralised way of storing and sharing data using cryptography, distributed networks and ledger systems. Last year, a report by Vantage market research stated that the global Web 3.0 blockchain market revenue is expected to reach a value of $23.3 billion in 2028.
Companies from developed nations were at the forefront of the Web1 and Web2 evolution. This scenario is likely to change in Web3. As the most populous economy, experts suggest that India has a potential to be the global player in the Web3 market. Eleven percent of global Web3 talent is in India, making it the third-biggest talent pool in this sector, after the US and China. This pool is growing at the fastest rate worldwide, at 120 percent likely in the couple of years, according to a study by NASSCOM. There are over 450 Web3 startups in the country that have got $1.3 billion in investments in the last two years. Over 160 of these startups were founded between 2021 and 2022. However, due to a lack of clarity on regulations, 60 percent of Indian Web3 startups are registered outside, but hire tech workforce in India.