Simon Ferrigno speaks to the founders of a blockchain technology that is being trialled by Indian organic cotton supplier Pratibha Syntex to find out how it can improve traceability in the company's supply chains.
Infinichains is a one-year old business started by Silicon Valley pair Parth Patil and Rajesh Choudhari who both have backgrounds in technology working with Yahoo and various other tech start-ups. Choudhari sold his business to Google and is based in the USA, but the blockchain development is done in India where Patil now resides.
Headquarted in the Bay Area of San Francisco, Infinichains benefits from intellectual property protections in the USA, there is access to many brands, and they say it’s a good place to raise further capital if needed. However, the company’s starting capital of US$ 2.4 million came from an Indian pharma investor and philanthropist, which funded one of its first projects to look at drugs counterfeiting in Uganda, following products from factory to pharmacy.
Since then, the business has worked on an organic cotton pilot study with Pratibha Syntex in a bid to trace product from farm to garment and from garment to farm using its ‘Credible’ software tool. “Since then it’s been a question of developing new technology features, putting them into daily use to test the complexities – such as managing the product ‘ins and outs’ by correcting volumes for waste/loss in production,” said Parth. “Software is being built to allow the acquisition of cotton to be recorded and for the correct payments to be made.”
