According to Chainalysis' '2025 Geography of Crypto Report' released in September, India has topped global crypto adoption charts for the third consecutive year. But a deeper change is happening under the surface. A growing mix of developers, founders and enterprises is now building practical blockchain systems - from financial infra to supply-chain systems and public digital platforms. The country's next phase of Web3 growth will be defined by how these practical integrations strengthen transparency, traceability and trust, moving the conversation from retail participation to real-world applications.

What distinguishes India's Web3 movement is not just its scale, but also the depth and sophistication of its innovation pipeline. With the world's second-largest developer pool, and one of the highest rates of on-chain wallet activity, as according to a16z's 'State of Crypto 2025' report released in October, India can operationalise blockchain beyond experimentation. A new gen of founders is developing compliance-ready, enterprise-grade solutions that bridge distributed systems with regulated financial architectures.

The industry has continued to build, test models and ship products despite policy ambiguity, demonstrating remarkable adaptability and resilience. The next wave of growth will depend on how effectively the country transitions from community-led adoption to structured and compliant deployment at scale. Evidence of this shift is increasingly visible.

In 2024, over 1,200 active Web3 startups in India raised around $462 mn. Enterprises are now moving from pilot projects to production-grade systems, showing growing corporate conviction in blockchain technology's utility.

In the past year, major global exchanges like Binance, Bybit and Bitget have registered with FIU-IND, signalling clearer alignment with India's compliance requirements. Coinbase's recent investment in CoinDCX reinforced foreign investor confidence in long-term market trajectory.

At the protocol level, global ecosystems such as Tether, Arbitrum and Monad have allocated India-focused teams and resources, reflecting a strategic shift from viewing India not only as an adoption market, but also as a builder ecosystem shaping the future of decentralised tech.

Reliance Jio's collaborations with Polygon Labs and Aptos Labs point to early movement from experimentation to scaled deployment. Mother Dairy's work with Spydra shows how tokenised provenance can upgrade efficiency and transparency in agricultural supply chains.

These deployments show that India's Web3 progress is increasingly rooted in real-world applications rather than speculative activity. Meanwhile, regulatory activity has gained momentum, even if gradually.

CBDT is seeking consultations from industry stakeholders on treatment of virtual digital assets (VDAs), showing openness to structured dialogue and co-regulation.

Nirmala Sitharaman recently emphasised the need to address stablecoins and digital asset oversight as part of India's evolving financial framework at the Global Fintech Festival 2025. Even the Madras High Court recently recognised cryptocurrency as 'property', prompting active legal developments for investor protection and asset classification. Together, these steps indicate a move toward policy alignment that complements market-led innovation.

Few countries have digital rails as widely adopted as India's DPI stack, giving the country a strong base for on-chain financial systems. The continued evolution of this architecture provides fertile ground for the emerging 'finternet' vision, enabling accessible and interoperable financial services for those traditionally excluded from the current financial system. By combining fintech infrastructure, decentralised identity and on-chain efficiency, India is uniquely positioned to serve as a global test bed for scalable blockchain deployment across public and private sectors.

So, India's Web3 maturity is being shaped less by regulatory certainty and more by tech conviction. Much like India's fintech journey, progress is coming from product deployment and ecosystem momentum, rather than from policy direction alone.

Enterprises and startups will still need to hold themselves to high standards of self-regulation, data transparency and adherence to international compliance standards, ensuring sustainable momentum aligned with investor and consumer protection norms.

The opportunity before India is both economic and strategic. If the Web3 momentum continues at this pace, India can set a global benchmark for how emerging economies scale trust in a decentralised internet. The coming years will determine whether India turns early promise into long-term leadership, depending on collaboration between innovators, institutions and policymakers in forming an inclusive economic infrastructure.