Crypto, blockchain, NFT jobs in India up 804% post-Covid: Report

Despite the appalling state of crypto markets globally, the cryptocurrency sector in India is experiencing a downpour of jobs. A new report by global job portal Indeed revealed an acceleration in the market’s demand. In 2022, the increase was 315%.  

Job postings in April 2022 were 15 times more than in 2019, highlighting the role of the pandemic in this sustained growth.  

The Covid-19 pandemic has fast tracked the adoption of technology across functions in India. Hence technology professionals are more in demand than ever before, especially with expertise in newer areas like cryptocurrency, NFTs and blockchain, the report said.  

Application developer is the top job role across this field, followed by data engineer and full stack developer. The data also shows that crypto roles appear to be one of the biggest shares of hires in overall technology job roles, increasing from 41% in 2019-2020 to 67% in 2021-2022.  

“Indian firms are rapidly investing in technologies that will put the country at the forefront of this new digital era. Technology hubs like Bengaluru and Hyderabad continue to lead with hiring in the sector while the national capital region is also seeing a fair share of interest in the sector,” Sashi Kumar, Head of Sales for Indeed India, said in a statement.  

Despite a slew of job cuts by crypto companies worldwide, many of the homegrown exchanges, including CoinDCX, CoinSwitch, WazirX, Unocoin and Mudrex are growing their hiring. For example, CoinDCX said in a LinkedIn update, it is projected to touch the 1,000-employee mark by the end of 2022, growing its workforce to almost four times over the past year. WazirX, the largest crypto exchange in India, too said that its employee strength grew by six times in the last six months.  

However, Kumar added that although “blockchain promises to be an exciting new field of work and offers tremendous scope for application, the sector is still very nascent”.  

It still has scaling issues and security concerns. Nevertheless, sectors such as finance, healthcare, and gaming are increasingly implementing decentralised finance, signalling the growing demand for jobs, the report said.  

A global report by Gartner forecasts that the business value generated by blockchain will grow rapidly, reaching $176 billion by 2025, potentially creating more job prospects.