In recent years India has seen a boom in blockchain-based startups but they are mostly focused on networks like Ethereum, Solana, Polygon, etc. There is a lack of awareness among people in India about Cardano and its ecosystem.

We are a team of two devs who have been involved in Cardano for a while now. Our first dApp was Deqree (Educational cert verification system on Cardano). We are now three-time Catalyst winners with multiple projects.

Cardsec - A self-audit toolkit for SPOs

• Github: <https://github.com/skryptlabs/cardsec>
• Winning Proposal: <https://cardano.ideascale.com/c/idea/383285>

Rarety.io - A multi-sig minting based NFT Launchpad

• Website: <https://rarety.io>
• Testnet: <https://testnet.rarety.io>
• Winning Proposal: <https://cardano.ideascale.com/c/idea/384881>

Now, as a blockchain-based startup in India, we want to scale up our team and drive adoption and innovation by spreading awareness about Cardano in the Indian developer community.

We will be addressing our solution by expanding our team and hiring more skilled developers based in India who have a particular interest in blockchain technology through interview sessions and developing Cardano-based coding problems to filter out the applicants.

After the hiring process is done we will be providing them a hands-on experience with Cardano by involving them with the projects we are working on like (rarety.io) and projects that have reached completion like (Deqree and Cardsec). Not only with dApps but we will also expose them to the Cardano ecosystem so that in the future these skilled developers can participate in the community by running a stake pool or developing ideas through catalyst or taking part in different IOHK pioneer programs to enhance their skills.

Our main challenge will be to spread awareness and create a buzz in the Indian developer community on job portals and LinkedIn about Cardano-related opportunities and then interviewing a certain amount of people and hiring them. We intend to solve this issue by using the seed fund that Project Catalyst will provide us.

April

• Creating Job posts on Indian job boards and Linkedin
• Creating an awareness campaign on social media about Cardano-related opportunities
• Creating a set of Cardano-based coding problems (for ex. Connecting wallet API in a react application) to filter out the skilled candidates
• Approaching freshers off-campus from premium institutes of India for internship opportunities at our startup

May

• Hiring a small team of skilled developers.
• Guiding devs in our live projects to get hands-on experience working with Cardano dApps and tools (Rarety, Deqree, and Cardsec).
• Encouraging interns to participate in pioneer courses to develop core skills.
• Guiding the team to interact with project catalyst and take a research-driven approach to identify real issues in India and develop proposals to solve them through blockchain tech.
• Building open-source solutions and tools for other developers in India like our multi-sig NFT minting platform and providing assistance to them in building more solutions targeting problems based in India.

Developer Salary - $25000 (2x Full stack dev + 1 Intern for minimum 6 months)

Operational Costs - $5000 (HR, Legal fees, Marketing, etc.)

Advait Joglekar (CTO, Backend Developer)

Adnan Khan - (CEO, Project and Tech lead)

We are a three-time Catalyst winners and developers of multiple projects on Cardano:

Rarety.io - Multi-sig based CNFT launchpad (https://youtu.be/DgFT8k_XGgQ)

Cardsec - A CLI based self audit tool for stake pool operators (https://github.com/SkryptLabs/Cardsec)

Deqree - A certificate validation platform on Cardano (https://youtu.be/GazDTaRKpjQ)

• Number of devs trained
• Number of new products or features developed in our dApps
• Number of interns onboarded
• Number of freshers participating in IOHK pioneer programs through us
• Number of catalyst proposals through Skrypt labs in upcoming funds targeting real issues
• Number of Github commits

The success for us will be creating a buzz in the developer community of India about the available opportunities in the Cardano ecosystem.

Our team of devs rolling out new features and trying their hands on building Cardano-based dApps from scratch. Our interns successfully completing pioneer programs to get skilled on core concepts. Our team proposing multiple solutions addressing real world problems in India through Project Catalyst resulting in more engagement from the Indian community to participate.

This is an entirely new proposal.