Crowdaura, a startup developing blockchain solutions for financial services, joined Accenture's Innovation Lab in London. It's the only fintech blockchain startup in the program and also participates
Crowdaura, a startup developing blockchain solutions for financial services, joined Accenture's Innovation Lab in London. It's the only fintech blockchain startup in the program and also participates in Microsoft Ventures Accelerator, also based in London.
The company builds technology that simplifies how banks, brokers, and exchanges issue, manage, and trade private placement securities. Their tools cut the friction and cost, opening up markets that financial institutions had skipped because the economics didn't work.
MiningPool spoke with Dr. Avtar Sehra, the company's founder and CEO, about what Crowdaura does and where blockchain fits into financial services.
What is Crowdaura and what does it do?
"Crowdaura gives banks, exchanges, and brokers a path into new markets that make financial sense," Sehra said. "Our technology lets these institutions execute deals they would have walked away from before because they weren't profitable enough."
How do you view the Accenture partnership and what does it bring to Crowdaura?
"Working with Accenture's Fintech Innovation Lab opens doors to potential clients. We get to test our product and build proof-of-concept systems with the firms that might use them. For the larger institutions, it creates space to launch new business lines," Sehra explained. "Disruptive tech starts in small or unprofitable niches. Over time, those technologies mature and reach bigger markets. We're helping investment banks use their scale and credibility to move into those smaller markets, grab good margins, and build capabilities they can apply to their main business, trading platforms or over-the-counter markets."
How does Crowdaura apply blockchain technology?
"We don't create proof-of-concepts that only work in theory," Sehra said. "Everything we build connects to real market structures and real business behavior. We call this 'Crowd Dynamics.' We map how the market works, how the business operates, and then we construct a minimal viable system that removes friction. We've pre-built a lot of components available as web-based services, what we call an 'investment bank engine-in-a-box'. But we unlock real value when different parties connect through a network. An exchange might link with a broker, or a bank with its clients. That's where our blockchain layer comes in. We've built a blockchain engine that can handle clearing, settlement, and custody work. It can execute Delivery Versus Payment with fiat currencies. We're also working on more complex on-chain features. Administration of dividends, coupons, and voting, those are straightforward. But we're thinking bigger. Blockchains with more computational power will unlock distributed markets down the road. That's where we see the long-term potential."
What's your outlook on blockchain's evolution?
"Bitcoin's blockchain has the deepest real-world track record of any blockchain out there because it's been running longer. Yes, it has scaling questions around block sizes and transaction speed. Those will get solved. For many uses, Bitcoin works fine. The public network will expand beyond payments. You can also run Bitcoin as a private network with adjustments, which gives you creative flexibility and lets you tune the infrastructure for whatever your needs are," Sehra said.
"Ethereum offers more flexibility for building and deploying complex systems fast. But it's new. The public blockchain hasn't been battle-tested enough for critical business processes. Even when we run it as a private network, we're cautious. That flexibility comes with complexity, and complexity means unknowns. When we work with financial services companies, we have to prove we take security and contingency planning seriously."
He added, "Hybrid solutions are coming. Rootstock is a side chain that could bring smart contract capability to Bitcoin's ecosystem. That will shake things up. In the long run, consortium chains will emerge, the kind of networks that become industry standard like Swift or Visa. But that's probably a decade away. Until then, the real blockchain applications in finance will happen inside institutions or among small groups of connected players."
