Mr. Ishan Roy
Name of Professional: Ishan Roy
Profession/Title: heads the Blockchain initiative at the Centre of Excellence for Emerging Technologies (CEET) at the Tamil Nadu e-Governance Agency (TNeGA).
Business/Company name: Centre of Excellence for Emerging Technologies (CEET) at the Tamil Nadu e-Governance Agency (TNeGA).
Date of Interview: 11/15/2021
I first contacted Mr.Roy through Linkedin and fortunately, Mr. Roy replied promptly, therefore getting in contact with him was made easier. I really wanted to speak to Mr. Roy to get his point of view on blockchain technology from a government perspective, and what his role is with blockchain in the government sector. Therefore when preparing for the interview I was extremely excited to speak to him. We had originally planned to meet on Monday 14,2021, however, due to Mr.Roy preferring to meet on a different day, we planned to meet on the next day Tuesday 14, 2021 at 10:30 pm. This process of rescheduling and the confirming meeting went smooth due to me learning about this during my ISM class.
The next day Tuesday 14, 2021 at 10:30 pm, I had got ready for my meeting in my formal wear and was excited to finally meet him. At precisely 10:30 pm the meeting began and we started with introductions. He had told me he started a start-up related to blockchain and told about how he had stumbled upon blockchain by pure chance as his first job was at ICICI bank as a Product Manager, for Blockchain and DLT Projects. Due to his previous experience in a bank, Mr. Roy was more interested in the financial aspect of blockchain. He found Di-FI technology to be interesting and considered it to be one of the upcoming technology. I learned Di-Fi stands for decentralized finance which is a blockchain-based form of finance where all finance-based transactions can be done online with no intermediaries and use smart contracts to make this possible. Some possibilities with this technology are businesses set up online, with no physical contact and intermediaries necessary. This was incredibly interesting to me, as I had not heard of this prior to this meeting, and quickly piqued my interest.
I then went on to ask him what some qualities are necessary to be successful in the blockchain field, he answered by saying knowing how major blockchain based platforms work (Such as and etherium), he also stated that due to the fact that the field of blockchain requires a lot of problem-solving, having an open and out of box mindset is necessary. This made a lot of sense to me and was very similar to what Mrs.Ponnipali stated during our meeting. Through this meeting, I also found out that Mr. Roy had joined the government through blockchain instead of joining a blockchain business( which is most likely more profitable). He stated he wasn’t to be a part of the government in order to be a bigger part in impacting society, as though the government is the easiest method to spread the blockchain use. This told me that he was not joining the field of blockchain for the money but for the sake of helping others, as I read about other blockchain-related experts I felt that most people joined and are a part of blockchain mainly for the money rather than how blockchain help society. Therefore when he told me he wanted to help others I was excited. The last thing we spoke about was his experience and his previous projects, to which he responded I work with making selling and acquiring land easier and more efficient, as most issues that come up are related to land disputes.
In conclusion, it was a pleasure speaking with Mr. Roy as he though me so much about blockchain in such a short time, and would love to speak to him again. Thank you for your time, Mr.Roy, I really appreciated the meeting.