Sofocle Developing Blockchain based Compliance Platform in UAE

UNLOCK interviewed Dr. Ravi Chamria, Chief Executive Officer of Sofocle to discuss what Sofocle is developing in terms of blockchain solutions and the future of Blockchain in MENA.

Sofocle for those who don’t know it, is a Blockchain Company that focuses on Developing Innovative Blockchain Solutions for Finance, Product Supply Chain & Insurance. It is made up of a group of researchers, developers, project managers and consultants, whose core aim is to brain storm revolutionary Blockchain concepts and convert them into Enterprise solutions that can solve real business problems. Its current employee base boasts of expertise in software engineering and blockchain Sofocle is working on platforms such as Hyperledger Sawtooth, Credits, Ethereum, Bitcoin and others to provide enterprise solutions across the region.

According to Dr. Chamria, “One of the most prominent solutions being adopted utilizing blockchain today is supply chain financing. Six months ago Sofocle partnered with marketplace for supply chain finance where various stakeholders such as buyers, sellers, logistics, insurance companies have come together utilizing our product SofoCap, a blockchain based solutions that provides seamless invoice discounting easing the complexities of Supply chain financing and reducing costs.”

Another case for blockchain has been with e-warranty which is also gaining a lot of traction according to Dr. Chamria. Dr. Chamria believes that Blockchain projects will only truly flourish with consortiums. He explains, “Today the MENA region and India are still slow when it comes to blockchain proof of concepts both in government and enterprises, they are still exploring and identifying value. Another reason is that it takes a lot of effort to build consortiums and onboard partners due to governance issues and concerns, but we are optimistic that this will start to be resolved in 2020.”

Sofocle is working very heavily not only on existing blockchain protocols but is also developing its own. It has built a lot of solutions on hyperledger Sawtooth, smart contracts and IOT (Internet of Things). Sofocle has developed sofoPay, a Blockchain-based solution designed to streamline Procure-to-Pay process. The solution is built on HyperLedger and uses Smart Contracts for digitizing processes. Another solution is Certum which is a Blockchain-based solution that helps in determining and proving provenance of a product and securely track & trace exactly where product is in a Global Supply Chain. In addition there is Insurra, a Blockchain-based solution that utilizes Smart Contract, AI and Mobile App to Automate Insurance Processes. There are other solutions pertaining to digital certificates, P2P energy trading and more.

Dr. Chamria adds, “Sofocle is working with some large system integrators out of India and Dubai to build and deploy Blockchain solutions in government domain. We have clients in the financial service sector where we are building a compliance platform to reduce the risks of onboarding; this will also be useful in other sectors. We will be going live in a couple of months.”

Dr. Chamria explains, “Sofocle is also working in the UAE on tokenization. We are working on an asset backed stablecoin with an underlying Blockchain based supply chain for traceability of asset. We are using Hyperledger Sawtooth and Ethereum. We believe that tokenization is a very powerful core of any blockchain application and there will be more and more uses cases utilizing tokenization. Tokenization of assets will be used more and more to track these assets.”

Sofocle works with an array of partners that include names such as Microsoft, Trusted IOT Alliance, Multichain, Linux and Credits. With Credits for example Sofocle have jointly developed a product call Zeeve, blockchain enabled Infrastrucuture as a service platform. Zeeve is a platform with robust Blockchain core infrastructure that allows businesses or Developers to set-up their own Blockchain ecosystem. Users can also develop, test and deploy their own smart contracts for faster DApps development. Zeeve as a marketplace allows you to list your DApps and monetize them.

Dr. Chamria looks towards more growth within Sofocle and more expansions and partnerships in USA, Canada, adding to the already existing ones in Indi, Singapore and UAE.