Seracle: Building infra for Web 3 services

By Srinath Srinivasan

Founded by Shrikant Bhalerao, Seracle makes software infrastructure for block chain applications. With prime focus on fintech apps involving blockchain, Seracle has been helping out neo banks/wallets and crypto currency exchanges build their applications atop some of the most important blockchain networks. “About five years ago, block chain was not very popular. Even crypto currencies were unknown. Today, people have some understanding of it. What we call as infrastructure is the underlying layer of the wallets system, the layer of funds atop which exchanges can be built and users can trade,” says Shrikant Bhalerao, co-founder and CEO, Seracle.

Seracle works with banks in Thailand and Europe. In addition, for a government agency of Thailand called Medikhana, it offers supply chain management solutions, an important application of blockchain technology, for the management of supply of medicinal hemp and for some healthcare companies in the US, it offers blockchain based solutions for management of research data. The company has ownership over the transactional data on the chain. “For us this data is important to run our AI and Ml suite. This is done to keep a record of ransom or other criminal activity,” says Bhalerao.

According to him, the offerings are a bit complicated compared to a SaaS solution and so every bit of the solution is customised to the client’s needs. “For this reason they can’t download it like just another SaaS solution and use. The clients get a license from us. We maintain an exclusive server for them. We also do their front end. The data are sometimes very sensitive and so customisation to their needs becomes top priority,” says Bhalerao.

The bootstrapped company turned profitable in 2018 and has a revenue of around $6 million. With margins around 50%, the startup has acquired an NBFC in India to enter into the financial services sector. “We will raise money for lending but not as investments,” says Bhalerao. He aims to start lending as a service as part of the firm’s infrastructure offerings.

Seracle has teams in Bangalore, Singapore and Thailand. “There are about 80 employees and it is indeed tricky to find the right talent. We do some level of training on relevant technologies, especially for the backend,” says Bhalerao. “Today 80% of our revenues come from cryptos and 20% from other blockchain applications. We are looking to increase the blockchain side of business,” he adds.

According to him the blockchain space is getting easier by the day to operate in, however, not without challenges. “In a centralised network you can have different profiles and monitor the activities of the network centrally using a console or control panel. In blockchain, this is not widely possible. The network which allows this level of functionality is not mature for wide adoption. Then there is a cultural problem among leadership around awareness of the technology,” says Bhalerao.