Is There a Competitive Advantage for Companies Using Blockchain?

Published on May 9, 2018

Updated on Oct 16, 2019

Do you mostly buy from your ‘favourite’ local store? What if all the outlets of your favourite store knew your shopping habits and preferences? Provided your data is kept secure along the transaction chain, are the promise of hyper-personalization and ultra-high convenience worth the trade-off?

Thankfully, this isn’t hypothetical. Companies using blockchain or distributed ledger technology are able to track records easily on a global scale. Not only in retail, but almost every industry is applying blockchain to simplify its processes and offer personalized solutions to its customers.

In this article, we’ll discuss what makes blockchain a compelling technology and its continuing adoption across industries.

Why are Companies Using Blockchain?

Blockchains are encrypted, growing lists of records. It records every single transaction with a time-stamp. No one, including the owner, can modify the ledgers (or records) in a blockchain.

The following features make the blockchain technology a perfect fit for transactional record-keeping in different industries.

Distributed: Blockchain is a decentralized technology, i.e. there’s no authority looking after the framework and operations. The data is accessible to all participants in the network.
Immutable: One of the key advantages of blockchain over any other technology is unchangeability. Post-transaction, no one including the creator can modify the records.
Robust: Traditional communication channels involve many indirections. For example, a bank executes transactions in its centralized database. Then the bank sends the corresponding email/SMS to the user about the transaction. Blockchain is a decentralized technology i.e. users have direct access to the transaction settlements. Companies using blockchain are more robust towards internal and client services.
Encrypted: Encryption is core to the security in blockchain technology. It means only the authorized users and participants can access the information. It also secures the identity of the participants. Ciphertexts (encrypted data, which is meaningless to external users) protects the information from intruders.
Consensus: The consensus algorithms are core to the blockchain architecture. The consensus is a decision-making process for a group of active nodes (participants). Participants agree to the decision made by the algorithm.
Tracking: It is easier to track transactions in a blockchain. The technology records every transaction with a time-stamp thus preventing corruption.

The finance industry was an early adopter of blockchain technology. In fact, the credit for the popularity of this technology goes to ‘bitcoins’, which are completely digital financial transactions.

Blockchain Adoption Across Industries

Here’s an overview of how industries using blockchain are enhancing the operations.

Use of Blockchain in Supply Chain and Logistics

E-commerce is certainly giving a boost to the supply chain and logistics industry. But, are traditional record-keeping compatible with the growing demands? Because, today, to deliver a product from point A to point B might include multiple geographies and involve multiple entities, invoices, payments, and extend over months. However, tracking shipments and business transparency is one of the key challenges that the supply chain industry struggles with. Companies using blockchain in the supply chain domain can benefit in the following ways-

Payments and fund transfers are fast and simple for stakeholders at the international level.
It’s possible to keep a track record for the product from its source of origin to end-users. For example, Walmart uses blockchain to track pork it sources from China. It records where each piece of meat came from, processed, stored, its sell-by-date, and the buyer.
Since every participant can collaborate and share records, blockchain ensures transparency in information sharing.

Blockchain in Financial Services

Statista expects that the global blockchain technology market will reach $23.3 bn by 2023. It also suggests that the financial sector will cover more than 60% of investments in this technology.

Financial services can harness blockchain for robust cross-border payments and processing, P2P payments, micropayments, and currency exchange. Investors, day traders, and market makers can also deploy blockchain for clearing and settlement in almost real-time.

Blockchain in Travel

Travel is one of the fastest-growing aspects of the global economy. Both customers and travel & tourism service providers can harness blockchain applications. Customers need not hassle with forex and can access in-depth travel-related information of the destination.

Travel businesses can bring transparency in flight and hotel bookings. For instance, for flight and hotel for a customer, a travel agency needs to share information to the customer and different firms. Blockchain can reduce manual dependencies by sharing relevant information to different stakeholders instantly.

In the list of travel companies using blockchain, Winding Tree is a leading name. It is a decentralized travel ecosystem startup that connects travellers to service providers like airlines, hotels, and tour guides directly. By eliminating the third-party fees associated, it reduces travel overheads. Blockchain’s LIF tokens, Smart Contracts, and ERC827 protocol are at the core of Winding Tree’s travel technology.

Blockchain in Insurance

The insurance industry often struggles with double-booking, counterfeiting, and premium diversions through unlicensed brokers. Distributed ledger technology in insurance can help to minimize the instances of fraudulent activities.

Smart contracts, insurance claims automation, UAVs (unmanned aerial vehicles) for underwriting, and shared databases to simplify insurance can bring transparency in the insurance industry.

Blockchain Benefits in Healthcare

The traditional healthcare record-keeping is cumbersome and the surgeon might lose important remarks, allergies, etc. while going through manual files and folders. Blockchain can track one’s medical history since birth. Also, every minute detail of diagnosis would be available to the medical professionals, even if the patient loses the prescriptions and reports.

WHO reports that developing nations produce about 10%-30% of the counterfeit drugs. Moreover, the counterfeit drug market hit $200 billion worth in 2018. Blockchain can track the drug right from sourcing the raw materials to manufacturing and distribution, reducing the instances of this critical challenge of counterfeiting.

Concluding Remarks

The International Data Corporation (IDC) predicts- investment in blockchain solutions will reach $11.7 billion in 2022 from $552 million during 2018. The blockchain trends that different industries will witness include-

Blockchain as a Service (BaaS)
Favourable regulations around the world towards blockchain
Consumer-centric digital assets
Additional security layers
Use of blockchain technology for better user experiences (UX).

Building blockchain systems are transforming the transaction value chain across industries. Talk to our experts to learn how blockchain is shaping the future of digital enterprises. Drop us a word at hello@mantralabsglobal.com

Contributing Authors: Nidhi Agrawal (Content Writer @Mantra Labs)

Let’s take a trip back in time—2008. Netflix was nothing like the media juggernaut it is today. Back then, they were a DVD-rental-by-mail service trying to go digital. But here’s the kicker: they hit a major pitfall. The internet was booming, and people were binge-watching shows like never before, but Netflix’s infrastructure couldn’t handle the load. Their single, massive system—what techies call a “monolith”—was creaking under pressure. Slow load times and buffering wheels plagued the experience, a nightmare for any platform or app development company trying to scale

That’s when Netflix decided to do something wild—they broke their monolith into smaller pieces. It was microservices, the tech equivalent of turning one giant pizza into bite-sized slices. Instead of one colossal system doing everything from streaming to recommendations, each piece of Netflix’s architecture became a specialist—one service handled streaming, another handled recommendations, another managed user data, and so on.

But microservices alone weren’t enough. What if one slice of pizza burns? Would the rest of the meal be ruined? Netflix wasn’t about to let a burnt crust take down the whole operation. That’s when they introduced the Circuit Breaker Pattern—just like a home electrical circuit that prevents a total blackout when one fuse blows. Their famous Hystrix tool allowed services to fail without taking down the entire platform.

Fast-forward to today: Netflix isn’t just serving you movie marathons, it’s a digital powerhouse, an icon in platform engineering; it’s deploying new code thousands of times per day without breaking a sweat. They handle 208 million subscribers streaming over 1 billion hours of content every week. Trends in Platform engineering transformed Netflix into an application dev platform with self-service capabilities, supporting app developers and fostering a culture of continuous deployment.

Did Netflix bring order to chaos?

Netflix didn’t just solve its own problem. They blazed the trail for a movement: platform engineering. Now, every company wants a piece of that action. What Netflix did was essentially build an internal platform that developers could innovate without dealing with infrastructure headaches, a dream scenario for any application developer or app development company seeking seamless workflows.

And it’s not just for the big players like Netflix anymore. Across industries, companies are using platform engineering to create Internal Developer Platforms (IDPs)—one-stop shops for mobile application developers to create, test, and deploy apps without waiting on traditional IT. According to Gartner, 80% of organizations will adopt platform engineering by 2025 because it makes everything faster and more efficient, a game-changer for any mobile app developer or development software firm.

All anybody has to do is to make sure the tools are actually connected and working together. To make the most of it. That’s where modern trends like self-service platforms and composable architectures come in. You build, you scale, you innovate.achieving what mobile app dev and web-based development needs And all without breaking a sweat.

Is Mantra Labs Redefining Platform Engineering?

We didn’t just learn from Netflix’s playbook; we’re writing our own chapters in platform engineering. One example of this? Our work with one of India’s leading private-sector general insurance companies.

Their existing DevOps system was like Netflix’s old monolith: complex, clunky, and slowing them down. Multiple teams, diverse workflows, and a lack of standardization were crippling their ability to innovate. Worse yet, they were stuck in a ticket-driven approach, which led to reactive fixes rather than proactive growth. Observability gaps meant they were often solving the wrong problems, without any real insight into what was happening under the hood.

That’s where Mantra Labs stepped in. Mantra Labs brought in the pillars of platform engineering:

Standardization: We unified their workflows, creating a single source of truth for teams across the board.

Customization: Our tailored platform engineering approach addressed the unique demands of their various application development teams.

Traceability: With better observability tools, they could now track their workflows, giving them real-time insights into system health and potential bottlenecks—an essential feature for web and app development and agile software development.

We didn’t just slap a band-aid on the problem; we overhauled their entire infrastructure. By centralizing infrastructure management and removing the ticket-driven chaos, we gave them a self-service platform—where teams could deploy new code without waiting in line. The results? Faster workflows, better adoption of tools, and an infrastructure ready for future growth.

But we didn’t stop there. We solved the critical observability gaps—providing real-time data that helped the insurance giant avoid potential pitfalls before they happened. With our approach, they no longer had to “hope” that things would go right. They could see it happening in real-time which is a major advantage in cross-platform mobile application development and cloud-based web hosting.

The Future of Platform Engineering: What’s Next?

As we look forward, platform engineering will continue to drive innovation, enabling companies to build scalable, resilient systems that adapt to future challenges—whether it’s AI-driven automation or self-healing platforms.

If you’re ready to make the leap into platform engineering, Mantra Labs is here to guide you. Whether you’re aiming for smoother workflows, enhanced observability, or scalable infrastructure, we’ve got the tools and expertise to get you there.

How blockchain is disrupting businesses?

Why are Companies Using Blockchain?

Blockchain Adoption Across Industries