India's Mahindra to use blockchain for supply chain financing

Rage Review : Indian multinational Mahindra Group announced that it will use blockchain to improve supply chain financing business and plans to expand to other businesses. It has cooperated with IBM and some start-ups in research and development. The group is one of the few groups outside of banks that announced the development of a blockchain platform.

Translation: Annie_Xu

India’s Mahindra Group has begun using blockchain to improve its supply chain financing business and will apply blockchain to other businesses by the end of next year.

Blockchain can build a ledger that cannot be tampered with.

Anish Shah

Anish Shah, Group Strategy Director, said:

“We have a digital team that was formed 11 months ago to work on blockchain. We have five use cases planned, but decided to pilot supply chain finance.”

This project will take a month or two to produce results. If successful, other blockchain use case studies will begin.

The group is also researching AR and VR technologies and collaborating with IBM on blockchain.

Blockchain applications can help Mahindra reduce the time it takes to manage invoice discounting. This is the process of selling unpaid bills at a discount, which is a major source of liquidity for capital providers without having to wait for months.

Sriram Raghavan

Sriram Raghavan, Director, IBM Research India, said:

"Normally this process takes seven days because it requires human intervention and sometimes there are disputes. But blockchain provides a single source of truth, reduces risks and improves efficiency."

IBM has decided to combine the Internet of Things and blockchain technology to track the transportation process of trucks and goods.

"Many compensation disputes arise from delivery time. If the Internet of Things is used, data such as delivery time can be recorded on the blockchain."