The Aptos blockchain, which recently announced a strategic partnership with Indian telecom behemoth Reliance Jio, is making a massive bet on the Indian market. The numbers, according to its leadership, already tell a compelling story of India's dominance on its platform.
India: The Heart of Aptos's User Growth
Avery Ching, co-founder of Aptos and a former Meta engineer who helped build systems at Facebook scale, disclosed that the Aptos network currently sees around 20 million monthly active addresses. In a striking revelation, he stated that more than half of those are originating from India. Ching shared these insights during an interview on the sidelines of the India Blockchain Week event in Bengaluru.
He credited his decade-long experience at Meta for shaping Aptos's foundational philosophy. At Facebook, the internal benchmark was about one engineer for every million customers. This mindset led the Aptos team to design the blockchain for scale from the ground up, rather than for small, niche use cases. Ching argued that the technology, which has its roots in the Libra/Diem project he worked on, is now 10x or 100x better than what was available at Meta in the past.
Beyond Wallets: Building Real-World Revenue Applications
Ching emphasized that the next phase for Aptos in India is not merely about increasing wallet counts. The primary goal is to foster real-world applications that generate tangible revenue. He believes Indian founders, whom he sees as more focused on building sustainable businesses than on quick token launches, will be crucial in transforming Aptos into a hub for large-scale consumer, financial, and AI applications.
India is already home to several of Aptos's flagship investments and projects. Through Aptos Labs, the company has backed:
- Short-video app Chingari.
- Gaming and creator-economy startup Stan.
- AI-infrastructure firm KGEN, based in Bengaluru.
Ching added that KGEN is already one of the biggest revenue drivers for Aptos globally. The current collaboration with Reliance Jio is exploring use cases in loyalty programs and advertising networks.
Government Pilots and a Decentralised Trading Future
Aptos is also actively involved in government-led initiatives. In Telangana, more than 20,000 students are using its blockchain infrastructure to store their resumes on-chain. Additional programs with the central government and for rural development are in the pipeline.
On the trading front, Ching pointed out that centralized crypto exchanges earn more than $50 billion in revenue annually. A key vision for Aptos is to migrate a significant portion of this activity on-chain. To this end, Aptos is developing its own platform called Decibel. Ching described it as a fully decentralised spot and perpetual futures exchange that aims to match the performance of giants like Binance and Coinbase while offering unmatched accessibility.
He noted that perpetual futures are a popular product but haven't yet successfully combined high-speed trading with true decentralisation—a gap Decibel intends to fill. This move is part of a broader ambition to support not just payments but also a global trading infrastructure for any kind of public markets.
