The Indian state of Kerala will soon have its own blockchain academy – the second such institution in the country.

A collaboration between the Indian Institute of Information Technology and Management Kerala (IIITM-K) and the Blockchain Education Network (BEN), the academy will focus on research innovation and consulting. Specifically, it will focus on exploring blockchain use cases in banking, healthcare and governance.

India’s first blockchain academy was set up by Primechain Technologies Private Limited in Baner, near the major city of Mumbai. It offers several courses for both developers and those who wish to learn more about the tech.

The latest Kerala enterprise was announced by Dr Rajasree M S at blockchain conference held recently at Technopark in Kerala’s capital Thiruvananthapuram, according to reports.

The conference also featured Dr Dilip Krishnaswamy, senior research scientist for IBM Research Labs, and Michael Gord of the BEN, who spoke about the benefits of blockchain during a video conference.

Notably, IIITM, the institution co-founding the new academy, is a supporter of the Maker Village project in the Keralan city of Kochi. Maker Village is an electronics incubator that views blockchain as relevant in developing IoT solutions for machine-to-machine payments.

India is no stranger to bitcoin and blockchain news. Last week, Reserve Bank of India (RBI) deputy governor Rama Subramaniam Gandhi commented that the potential of blockchain-based currencies is “being overstated”. Bitcoin’s lack of central authority and pseudonymous nature mean it is unlikely to replace central-bank issued currencies, he argued.

The RBI also recently published research on how to digitize the country’s national currency, the rupee, with the ultimate aim of removing physical cash from the Indian economy.

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