GMR Group Launches Blockchain Centre Of Excellence For Airports

GMR Group on Saturday launched a Blockchain Centre of Excellence (CoE) for airports as part of its expansion of GMR Innovex initiative.

GMR Innovex - Blockchain Centre of Excellence will identify and incubate startups and catalyze innovative product development under the guidance of business leaders and domain experts in association with blockchain technology partners, according to a statement released by GMR Group.

The Blockchain CoE will provide access to the required infrastructure and labs 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 the field of 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 ancillary business.

Jayesh Ranjan, Principal Secretary of the Industries and Commerce (I&C) and Information Technology (IT), Govt of Telangana was the chief guest on the occasion.

Speaking on this occasion, SGK Kishore, ED-South and Chief Innovation Officer - GMR Airports said, "We are excited to launch the Blockchain CoE for our group, which intends to work with various Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT) technology players, to build a slew of applications for the distributed technology landscape."

"We believe the industry is slowly emerging with respect to utility and value that DLT systems present, specifically for a multi-stakeholder environment like airports. We already have use-cases that we are ear marking to build on which will help create transparency, trust, data bartering and shared value and experience for our partners and customers," Kishore said.

Prasanna Lohar, President, India Blockchain Forum said, "India Blockchain Forum, is excited to partner with GMR Innovex on its journey to building the CoE and building enterprise class dApps. We believe being Foundational Technology, Blockchain has lot of applicability and relevance in the broader aviation space. We should see this collaboration will bring much needed innovation for aviation space."

GMR Innovex has onboarded Pankaj Diwan as the Chief Evangelist for leading the GMR Innovex Blockchain CoE, who has been associated with blockchain-related activities for long time. He will also be supported by a group of blockchain advisors who are an expert grouping and practitioners in different industry vertical, GMR Group said in the statement.

"Blockchain is emerging as the biggest disruptor in business after the advent of internet with a potential to transform entire business ecosystems. Idealabs is happy to partner with GMR Group and GMR Innovex for the Blockchain CoE. We are excited to help the GMR Innovex Blockchain CoE develop internal blockchain competency and explore relevant use cases in the airport ecosystem," said Pankaj Diwan, who is also the founder, Idealabs Future Tech Ventures.

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