The Maharashtra government has been using blockchain technology to issue and allow verification of reports with negative results for Covid-19. The Department of Disaster Management and Recovery has tied up with a private start-up, Print2Block to arrange for all negative reports to be managed over blockchain.

Print2Block is an award-winning Chennai based startup, whose digital documentation over blockchain service has been successful in enrolling several public and private organizations. The online service at https://www.print2block.com/ has issued over 46 million digital documents so far.

The company’s existing product was customized to meet the requirements of the Covid report project. Along with negative Covid test reports, the blockchain also manages issue of Universal Passes. The service has so far issued over 14M such passes, but not without the occasional delay and hang-ups.

Given the sensitivity of the data, the entire blockchain hardware and data will be owned by the Maharashtra government. Since the data is stored on a private blockchain, it will be audited and verified by a public blockchain. For this purpose, Mumbai’s Polygon Matic Network, recently in news for crossing a market cap of $13 billion, has been roped in.

After following the QR code or the link, anyone can verify the test report by clicking on the verify button.

A typical result looks like this:

Print2Block was founded in 2017 by Joji Varghese and Vignesh Babu Venkatesan. In 2019, it won the Maharashtra Startup Startup week award. Among its other government clients are the Maharashtra Pollution Control Board, and the Electricity Board.

The company’s flagship product is Docchain.io – a Web3.0 Document Issuing System, a trust infrastructure for issuing digital certificates which can eventually replace paper printed certificates and documents without loss of authenticity and trust.

The Covid test certificates are among the new areas where state governments across India have been experimenting with deploying blockchain technologies. As a way to increase transparency and bring about eGov services, blockchain projects are currently being run in states like Andhra Pradesh (for land records) and Telangana, Delhi and more.