'Being a huge economy, regulations is a big problem for India in Web3 space' In 2017, Nailwal co-founded Polygon Labs (formerly Matic Network) as an easy-to-use platform for Ethereum scaling and infrastructure development. In 2023, it is one of the largest players worldwide in the Web3 space with a total funding of USD 451M
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Where does Sandeep Nailwal envision Polygon to be? "The vision and mission of Polygon is to build this planetary-scale blockchain infrastructure for Web3 applications," he shares. To achieve this scale, the top priority becomes infinite scalability for Web3 apps.
In 2017, Nailwal co-founded Polygon Labs (formerly Matic Network) as an easy-to-use platform for Ethereum scaling and infrastructure development. In 2023, it is one of the largest players worldwide in the Web3 space with a total funding of USD 451M.
Talking about Web2's scalability feature, he shares "Web2 has seamless interconnectivity of data. We are creating this content here, and it is immediately being broadcasted all over the globe." And Polygon CDK will allow for this infinite scalability. With offerings such as PoS, ID, Miden, zkEVM, and CDK he aims to make 'the' application layer of Web3.
India contributes massively to the technical prowess of global tech giants. And presently, there are over 450+ Web3 startups in the country. Hailing from a humble background, Nailwal and Polygon are proactive when it comes to nurturing fresh Web3 talent through its grants and have actively backed several Indian web3 startups. But can the support of such startups be improved? He shares his views with Entrepreneur India on Web3's progress and future in India.
Web3 scene in India
There's a lot of energy amongst the developers, a lot of funds, especially foreign funds and investors are available in India today. Investors want to find the next big protocol coming out of India and they believe in the Indian founder story.
Web3 market in India is unlike UAE
India is such a big country and have a huge economy, ranking globally in the top five. The jurisdiction and management of these regulations is also a very big problem. So I also can understand from the government perspective, whereas UAE especially like Dubai or Abu Dhabi, they are much smaller jurisdictions, say one city and one particular regulator and you have like a few entrepreneurs, few companies in early thousands and that's pretty much about it. Whereas if you look in India, the number of people in this space is huge. So that's why I think they have to be more careful and be slow.
The advantage is that you are very big and the disadvantage is that you are very big. The smaller geographies can move much faster. And it's okay, I think it's not bad. And when these jurisdictions figure out the business models and how to regulate then these things can come to India. Gift City is the perfect move. Create those sandboxes, give them to the community, and see how it turns out. Even China is doing the same thing.
Indian Developers need to be more ambitious
I think now the way Web3 technology has grown, to be honest, you don't really need a lot of changes in the laws. The only change I would like to see would be with regard to builders and developers becoming more ambitoius. Everyone wants to hire from India. They are able to fetch hundred thousand dollars in salary, even the freshers. This is something which is very different from other industries. And many times they are also incentivized through vested tokens and equity shares, which developers cannot get in India right now. Their upside is limited. I want the talented people to be fully incentivized. I am okay with the government going extremely slow on the business side. Indian people just don't get the upside when working with these startups.
