GMR Launches Blockchain Center of Excellence for Airports
Hyderabad: GMR Group on Saturday launched a Blockchain Center of Excellence (CoE) for airports as part of the expansion of the GMR Innovex initiative.
GMR Innovex – Blockchain Center of Excellence will identify and incubate startups and catalyze innovative product development under the guidance of business leaders and domain experts in collaboration with blockchain technology partners, according to a statement released by GMR Group.
The Blockchain CoE will provide access to the necessary infrastructure and laboratories to start-ups, SMEs for the development and validation of solutions and services, from design to prototyping. It will also enable thought leadership, research and training programs for upskilling in blockchain.
GMR Innovex signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with Idealabs, Polygon, Koinearth, India Blockchain Forum and Veroince to explore opportunities, identify blockchain technology related use cases for airports and related business.
Jayesh Ranjan, Principal Secretary Industries and Commerce (I&C) and Information Technology (IT), Government of Telangana was the chief guest on the occasion.
Speaking on the occasion, SGK Kishore, ED-South and Chief Innovation Officer – GMR Airports said, “We are excited to launch Blockchain CoE for our group, which intends to collaborate with various players in Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT) to build a variety of applications for the distributed technology landscape.”
“We believe that the industry is slowly emerging on the utility and value that DLT systems present, especially for a multi-stakeholder environment such as airports. We already have use cases that we are earmarking to build on that will help create transparency, trust, data exchange and shared value and experience for our partners and customers, said Kishore.
Prasanna Lohar, President, India Blockchain Forum said, “India Blockchain Forum, is excited to partner with GMR Innovex on its journey towards building CoE and building enterprise class dApps. We believe that Blockchain is foundational technology and has a lot of applicability and relevance in it broader aviation space. We should see this collaboration bring much-needed innovation to the aerospace space.”
GMR Innovex has brought in Pankaj Diwan as Chief Evangelist to lead the GMR Innovex Blockchain CoE, which has been associated with blockchain related activities for a long time. He will also be supported by a group of blockchain advisors which is a group of experts and practitioners in various industry verticals, GMR Group said in the statement.
“Blockchain is emerging as the biggest disruption in business since the advent of the internet with the potential to transform entire business ecosystems. Idealabs is excited to partner with GMR Group and GMR Innovex for Blockchain CoE. We are excited to help GMR Innovex Blockchain CoE to develop in-house blockchain expertise and explore relevant use cases in the airport ecosystem,” said Pankaj Diwan, who is also the founder, Idealabs Future Tech Ventures.
