5 Leading Public Institutions Offering Blockchain Courses In India

Blockchain as an emerging technology has the potential to disrupt business models. In India, the technology gathered steam in 2016 and was largely adopted by banks and other financial institutes for various use cases. The technology with its decentralised mechanism comes with an inherent layer of security and transparency and have expanded its use cases to other industries like startups and media as well. According to Indeed, a leading global job site, the number of blockchain-related jobs is on the rise in India with Bengaluru leading the way by over 36 per cent. The designation of the jobs ranging from blockchain developer to blockchain system. In addition to this, the Indian central government’s initiative like IndiaChain and various state governments have been mulling the incorporation of the blockchain into their everyday-working. The government is also diversifying job recruitment by looking for people who are capable of delivering new age technology solutions. Recently, The National Payment Corporation of India (NCPI), opened a new challenge hiring challenge for blockchain developers. Called the NCPI Hiring challenge 2019, the government subsidiary is looking to hire blockchain developers who can be a part of the NCPI, an umbrella organisation for operating retail payments and settlement systems in India. Hence, with the demand for blockchain-related jobs on the rise, the number of students who are taking up the course are also rising, thus leading to mushrooming of many institutes and colleges offering blockchain-related courses across India. Catching up with several private institutes and online courses that are currently available for students and professionals alike, several public institutes like the IITs and IIMs are also offering crash-courses targeting blockchain enthusiasts. We take a look at some of these courses and what it entails:

IIM Calcutta: Advanced Programme in Banking and Fintech

Advanced Programme in FinTech and Financial Blockchains is a collaborative attempt between IIM-C and TalentSprint to provide a digital platform for professional education. Keeping this in mind, IIM Calcutta has come up with a new course targeting management and finance professionals, with the aim of equipping them with modern-age digital tools. Duration: 6 months Fee: : ₹ 3.36 lakh Who can attend: Banking Professionals interested to enhance their knowledge. Junior & Middle managers with 3-7 years of experience. Course content: Uses knowledge and network within the FinTech sector to curate and offer start-of-art capstone projects for programme participants, and actively leverage its digital platform for the purpose of accelerated experiential learning

IIT Kanpur: Blockchain Technology And Applications

Who Can Take The Course: Ph.D., Masters, 3rd And 4th Year UG Students   Duration: 40 hours Who can attend:  Ph.D., Masters, 3rd And 4th Year UG Students Requisite: Expertise In Programming, Basic Knowledge Of Computer Security, Cryptography, Networking, Concurrent Or Parallel Programming Would Help A Student To Understand The Topics. Course content:

• Basic Cryptographic primitives used in Blockchain – Secure, Collison-resistant hash functions, digital signature, public key cryptosystems, zero-knowledge proof systems
• Basic Distributed System concepts – distributed consensus and atomic broadcast, Byzantine fault-tolerant consensus methods
• Basic Blockchain (Blockchain 1.0) – concepts germane to Bitcoin and contemporary proof-of-work based consensus mechanisms, operations of Bitcoin blockchain, crypto-currency as the application of blockchain technology
• Blockchain 2.0 – Blockchains with smart contracts and Turing complete blockchain scripting – issues of correctness and verifiability, Ethereum platform and its smart contract mechanism
• Blockchain 3.0 – Plug-and-play mechanisms for consensus and smart contract evaluation engines, Hyperledger fabric platform

Note: This course is open to students of IIT Kanpur

IIT Madras: Foundation of blockchain technology

Who can attend: Anyone Fee: Free of charge Duration: Jan 2019 - May 2019 Prerequisite: Should have attended their programme on Programming and Data Structures and Advanced Data Structures and Algorithms Course content: A gist of what the course entails include: Understanding emerging abstract models for Blockchain Technology and  Identify major research challenges and technical gaps existing between theory and practice in cryptocurrency domain Syllabus

IIM Lucknow: Advanced Blockchain certification Course

Duration: 25th June 2019 - 30th June 2019 Last day of application:  5th April 2019. Course fee: ₹3,00,000 /- plus GST Who can attend: The In-residence Blockchain Course for Executives and Entrepreneurs is open to all the Blockchain enthusiasts. Course content: Blockchain Fundamentals, Introduction To Ethereum, Technicalities & Implementation Of Blockchain, Architecting Blockchain Solutions and New Generation Technology & Shift Of Blockchain

IIT B: Cryptocurrency and Blockchain Technologies

Duration: 1 Day Who can attend:

• Software engineers interested in pursuing a career in cryptocurrencies and blockchain. 
• Academics looking to conduct research on Bitcoin, altcoins, and blockchain. 
• Students interested in pursuing an academic or industry career in the field of cryptocurrencies.

Fee: Academia: ₹3540 Govt. Organisation: ₹3540 Industry: INR 4720 Overseas / Foreign National: ₹14160 Student (Full TIme): ₹1770 Course content: Challenges in Decentralized Digital Currencies Bitcoin’s blockchain as a solution to the double spending problem Bitcoin Mining Block Format Transaction format Bitcoin’s scripting language P2PKH and P2SH Address Formats Elliptic Curves over Finite Fields Private and Public Keys in Bitcoin Smart Contracts