Namaste 2023 - New Beginnings at Hyperledger India Chapter! – Hyperledger Foundation

2022 was a very successful year for the India Chapter, with both in-person and virtual events spanning across not just India, but internationally as well. Ably led by Arun SM, Staff Engineer at Walmart Global Tech and Kamlesh Nagware, CTO at Snapper Future Tech, the chapter saw increased community participation in 2022. 

The chapter hosted several webinars, meetups, panel discussions and  technical hands-on workshops, with experts in the field sharing insights  on several exciting opportunities in blockchain:

• The Women in Blockchain Webinar series, conducted in association with Saintgits College of Engineering, featured eminent women in the blockchain space sharing their thoughts on blockchain for social good, industry applications of blockchain, developer perspective from Web2 to Web3 and contributing to open source. 
  
  
• Blockchain Techfest ’22 was an event held to celebrate Hyperledger India’s 4-year anniversary. The event saw maintainers and blockchain evangelists discussing ESG, tokenization and the Metaverse. 
  Blockchain Stories was yet another in-person event where Julian Gordon, VP, Asia Pacific, Hyperledger Foundation and OpenSSF at The Linux Foundation, attended as the keynote speaker. Industry leaders from across the  geographies spoke about the advancements in blockchain research and  enterprise adoption of the same. 
  
  
• Other country-wide events included meetups, technical workshops and Hyperhack, a hackathon that garnered participation across the APAC region! 
  
  
• On the international front, we saw notable representation of India at Hyperledger Global Forum 2022, held in Dublin, Ireland. Some of the Indian speakers were Deepika Karanji, Arun SM, Vikram Sharma and Kamlesh Nagware. Ravi Pratap Singh, a student contributor to the India Chapter and Hyperledger mentee, got a full scholarship to attend the event.

As of 2023, Arun SM has been elected as the Vice Chair of the Hyperledger Foundation Technical Oversight Committee and will be stepping down as co-chair of the India Chapter. Taking over the baton as co-chairs are Vikram Sharma, Blockchain Practice Lead at HCL Technologies, and Deepika Karanji, SDE2 at Walmart Blockchain. Kamlesh Nagware will continue as co-chair in 2023. 

In a proactive move to streamline processes and to improve community outreach further in 2023, the Hyperledger India Chapter has revamped  the team structure. A team of leads, working with the newly appointed co-chairs, will be  overseeing specific domains. 

The new team consists of: 

• Event & Engagement Leads – Rajesh Krishnan & Ritu Jain (She/Her)
• Student Society Leads – Ravi Pratap Singh & Pramod Dhumal
• Developer Advocates – Kartikey Kashyap, Aditya Joshi & Nidhi Singh 

One of the key values at the chapter is to recognize community contributors for their hard work. The new team structure aligns with that focal point, with each of the succeeding co-chairs and leads having put in noteworthy efforts to support the chapter in the last year. 

Additionally, in an effort to increase dialogue and participation this year, we are now on Twitter and Reddit. 

As we kickstart Hyperledger India’s new innings, we look forward to  seeing greater engagement in the community, onboarding more folks, brainstorming on fresh ideas, hosting debates and discourse on everything blockchain, and using the key learnings from these discussions to take ideas to fruition! 

Exciting things ahead. 2023, here we come!