The Indian Institute of Management (IIM) is cooperating with digital platform TalentSprint to offer advanced courses in blockchain technology and financial technology (fintech) to professionals in the domestic financial industry, as well as other management personnel.

The programme will reportedly teach participants about fintech and its impact on traditional banking and finance. Prof. Indranil Bose, Programme Director at IIM, revealed that the goal of the course is to train a minimum of 2,000 professionals in the financial industry in skills relating to blockchain development required for businesses to be able to compete in the rapidly-changing landscape in different industries.

“Our fintech programme, formulated with today’s management and finance professionals in mind, will harness the extensive research and consulting expertise of IIM Calcutta faculty and our state-of-the-art Finance Lab,” Bose said. “We plan to train 2,000 FinTech professionals in the next few years.”

The Institute will reportedly offer the fintech and blockchain classes both online and offline, or in the “hybrid executive format,” with offline classes to be taught at the IIM Calcutta campus and TalentSprint responsible for delivering the online classes.

Though India is known for its lack of policies and regulations that support cryptocurrency exchanges and Bitcoin-linked ventures, the Indian government has demonstrated strong interest in fintech and blockchain technology.

The Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology reported that a total of 2.45 billion digital payments were carried out in August 2018. In November 2018, website BTCManager stated that India has the second highest number of blockchain developers worldwide.

In February this year, the commercial arm of the Cardano DLT project, Emurgo, introduced an academy in India with the aim of training at least 2,500 blockchain developers by 2020.

Source: btcmanager.com