September 28, 2018 — The NEM Middle East team went to the state of Kerala in India for the first official NEM event held in the country organized by the Sernez team. Sernez is building peerfin.io using the NEM blockchain. It is a decentralized lending platform for educational loans and scholarships. The meetup was held in the Athulya Auditorium, Infopark, Cochin India. Infopark Cochin is the largest IT hub in Kerala State and serves as incubator for startups from the region. Kerala aims to launch atleast 10000 startups by the year 2020.

An introduction to blockchain was discussed by Sreekanth GS, founder of Coinome exchange, one of the largest digital and crypto asset exchange in India. Paul Christian Espiritu General Manager of NEM Middle East, further discussed blockchain and Dona Rinon, Head of NEM Middle East introduced the NEM Blockchain Technology to the crowd which has a total of around 120 people in attendance. A panel discussion was conducted towards the end of the session where the audience was invited to pitch in their questions. Panel members were Dona Rinon, Paul Christian Espiritu, Srikanth GS and was also joined by Sernez CEO Rahul Pillai. Amrin Kareem, Content Lead & Social Media Manager for Sernez was the moderator of the entire event.

Event partners were ProximaX, a blockchain-based decentralized storage and content delivery network; NASSCOM or the National Association of Software and Services Company, a not-for-profit industry association committed towards supporting the IT BPM industry in becoming an indispensible powerhouse; and KSUM (Kerala Start Up Mission), the nodal agency of Government of Kerala for entrepreneurship development and incubation activities in Kerala, India.

The event marks NEM’s effort to establish its presence in India and hopes to be a key player in the 154 billion dollar IT BPM industry in India.