Vijay Pravin Maharajan is the founder and CEO of bitsCrunch, a startup based in Germany and India. The company was launched in May 2020 in India, then later established in Germany in 2021. Young Vijay who is 30 years old is a Blockchain/NFT expert who sees tremendous growth in these new areas requiring cutting edge technologies.
bitsCrunch is positioned as the guardian of the NFT (Non-Fungible Token) ecosystem. NFT is a digital asset that links ownership to unique physical or digital items, such as works of art, music, videos, or even real estate. They are modern-day collectibles.
Vijay says bitsCrunch is one of the top 4 Artificial Intelligence companies in Munich, Germany that excels in Blockchain technology. He believes that blending a proven technology like AI with Blockchain can do wonders and make the ecosystem for these much safer and more reliable.
Blockchain is a system of recording information that makes it impossible to hack, change or cheat the system. AI is a wide-ranging branch of computer systems associated with building smart machines which are capable of performing human tasks.
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Vijay is a small-town boy from Tirunelveli, Tamil Nadu. His father works for the Tamil Nadu Police Department, and his mother is a Government School teacher.
After a brilliant academic career and completing his engineering from Kongu Engineering College in Erode, Vijay went to Germany for his Masters which was acquired from the Technical University, Munich. Again, a topper, he worked for leading German Corporations such as Telefonica, Volkswagen, and Siemens. Although trained as an electrical engineer, his early career led him to data analytics. Very soon he was getting to be known as an expert in data science which was relatively a new area in the early 2010s. In 2020, he was among the top 20 data scientists chosen to be followed on LinkedIn. He was also recognized as one of the top 40 data scientists in India. He was speaking in Ted Talks and was being celebrated. There were many other awards coming his way.
Vijay decided to launch his own company after working for 8+ years. He wanted to do some niche things in the world of data. This led to bitsCrunch which is an analytics firm in the NFT space. “In 2021 we stepped into Blockchain,” says Vijay. bitsCrunch is headquartered in Germany as Blockchain is not fully regulated in India. The company is also based in India. It was a well-thought-out decision. NFT sales hit $25 billion in 2021, and it is growing fast with Metaverse in place. Metaverse describes a fully-realized digital world that exists beyond the world in which we live.
“We are data experts. We crunch each and every bit of data and that’s the reason behind the name ‘bitsCrunch’.” Vijay has built up a cross-functional team having people with more than 25+ years of experience in data analytics, machine learning, AI, and Blockchain. He wants to employ people from his home – Tamil Nadu, and the rest of India. He is also hiring women, particularly those who have had to take a break for personal reasons.
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bitsCrunch now offers 4 products:
1. NFT Information Center – A real-time NFT analytics dashboard and portfolio tracker.
2. AI Enhanced Safety Feature (Scour) – An AI agent that acts as a watchdog to flag spoofing transactions that manipulates both volume and price of the assets in the NFT ecosystem B2B.
3. Fair Price Value Estimation for an Asset (Liquify) – A fair value estimation and analytics for digital assets (NFTs) using AI to empower the community to embrace and value their assets in real-time B2B.
4. Digital Asset Forgery Detection System (Crunch Davinci) – An AI model that flags forgeries, copycats, and bootleg digital art contents thereby protecting the artists and their creation.
Vijay is confident of reaching prospective clients such as NFT marketplaces, NFT collections, and NFT enthusiasts. bitsCrunch will be useful to venture capitalists and Blockchain enthusiasts as well.
B2B product Scour is already used by customers like Rarible and Polygon. These are NFT marketplaces where products are sold. Vijay aims to build a secure NFT marketplace. “bitsCrunch enables NFT enthusiasts to decide which NFTs to buy and more importantly which not to buy. We prevent malicious activities in the NFT Marketplaces and make them the most trusted places to buy, sell and trade NFTs. We secure NFTs on Blockchains which differentiates them from others,” says Vijay.
bitsCrunch has managed two rounds of funding so far. It recently raised $3.6 million from some of the best in class investors like Animoca Brands, Coinbase Ventures, Crypto.com capital, Polygon Studios, and other leaders in the Blockchain industry.
Vijay is looking to hire people who are well adept in math, statistics, data science, and any blockchain specialization. He is aiming to expand his business venture with 1000+ employees in the next 5 years.
In the way forward, Vijay believes that with the kind of manpower and resources available in India, digital assets will become one of the major asset classes in the near future.
Vijay is raring to expand, add products, and remain a leader in providing security to the Blockchain industry. “The Blockchain area is like an ocean; We have an early mover advantage. People are not entering this space yet. We see tremendous potential,” says the company founder with justifiable optimism.
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