When the Economic Times included Sandeep Nailwal in the "40 Under 40" elite list, this honor is not merely a recognition of a single achievement, but a profound tribute to an entrepreneur who emerged from the slums of Delhi, reshaping India's innovation landscape through three major ventures: Polygon, SentientAGI, and BFI_Impact, and bringing local Web3 stories to the global stage. As a "pioneer" and "ambassador" of India's Web3 ecosystem, Nailwal's selection not only signifies that India's technological innovation has transcended the boundaries of traditional IT services but also proves that the power of emerging markets can define global rules in cutting-edge fields like blockchain and artificial intelligence, establishing a new benchmark for the industry with "technology inclusiveness + ecosystem co-construction."
1. The Value Behind Honor: India's Global Declaration of Innovation Power
(Economic Times) 40 Under 40 Elite List holds great authority in the business circles of India and South Asia, with its selection criteria not only emphasizing business achievements but also the reconstructive value to the industry ecosystem and social impact. Sandeep Nailwal's inclusion has broken the stereotype that India's innovation "relies on outsourcing and lacks core technology," marking a significant event in India's Web3 evolution from "follower" to "leader."
The core value of this honor lies in threefold verification: first, it verifies the compliance and scalable development of blockchain technology in India—once upon a time, India's regulatory stance on cryptocurrencies was wavering, but Nailwal, through the compliant operation and ecological construction of Polygon, has propelled India to become the global crypto new center by 2025, gaining international recognition for local technology; second, it verifies the global competitiveness of entrepreneurs in emerging markets—from the slums to managing a technology ecosystem valued at billions, Nailwal's personal trajectory overlaps with Polygon's growth path, proving that entrepreneurs from non-Western backgrounds can also build technological infrastructure that serves global giants like JPMorgan and Disney; third, it verifies the potential of Web3 as the "next generation innovation engine"—the list places Nailwal alongside traditional industry elites, marking that blockchain has moved from a marginal concept to a core innovation track in India, becoming an important force driving economic transformation.
2. Core Business Matrix: Building Global Competitiveness in Web3 with Three Major Sectors
Sandeep Nailwal's ability to "enhance India's global discourse in Web3" is crucially based on his creation of a "infrastructure + cutting-edge exploration + social value" trinity matrix, where each link precisely addresses industry pain points, forming a synergistic effect.
1. Polygon: From Scalability Challenges to the World's Third Largest Blockchain Ecosystem
As the core pillar of Nailwal's career, the development trajectory of Polygon (formerly Matic Network) is a microcosm of the rise of Indian Web3. In 2018, when Ethereum was mired in congestion due to the "CryptoKitties" incident, causing transaction fees to skyrocket by 600%, Nailwal and his team precisely seized the opportunity for Layer 2 scalability, launching a solution based on Rollup technology. At that time, Indian crypto projects were under suspicion due to frequent scams, and the team faced near dissolution multiple times due to funding shortages, even encountering a withdrawal of investment just two days before Nailwal's wedding, struggling on a few thousand dollars in monthly salary for two years.
Today, Polygon has grown into the world's third-largest blockchain ecosystem following Bitcoin and Ethereum, hosting over 7,000 decentralized applications, with a monthly active user base of 2.67 million and a daily transaction volume twice that of Ethereum's mainnet. Its technological breakthroughs are reflected in two aspects: first, through diverse solutions such as ZK-Rollup and Optimistic Rollup, it compresses transaction confirmation times to seconds and reduces transaction fees to a few cents, perfectly addressing Ethereum's core pain points of being "slow and expensive"; second, through a multi-chain architecture and EVM compatibility, it attracts leading protocols like Aave and Uniswap to migrate, forming a "developer-friendly + rich in scenarios" positive ecosystem cycle. After acquiring Mir for $400 million in 2025, Polygon further secured a technological high ground in zero-knowledge proofs, consolidating its global competitiveness. For India, Polygon is not only a local technological calling card but also creates a large number of high-quality job opportunities, driving explosive growth in the blockchain developer community.
2. SentientAGI: The "Loyalty Revolution" Reconstructing AI in Web3
After solidifying his footing in the blockchain field, Nailwal turned his attention to the intersection of AI and Web3, launching SentientAGI in collaboration with top scholars, attempting to resolve the core contradictions of current AI development—the lack of transparency and ethical risks of centralized large models. His proposed "Loyal AI Protocol" aims to transfer the control of AI models from tech giants to the community through on-chain collaboration, community governance, and incentive mechanisms, ensuring that "model behavior aligns with community values."
The breakthrough of this exploration lies in its provision of a "decentralized alternative" for the development of AGI (Artificial General Intelligence). Unlike the closed models of platforms like OpenAI, SentientAGI emphasizes open-source collaboration and verifiability, allowing the entire model training process to be traceable and decision-making logic auditable through blockchain technology, thereby avoiding the risk of AI misuse from the bottom-up design. For India, this layout enables local players in the AGI race to achieve "leapfrogging"—not needing to catch up with the US and Europe in computational power accumulation, but instead defining new rules for AI governance through institutional innovation, further expanding global discourse in the Web3 field.
3. BFI_Impact: The Social Value of Technological Inclusiveness
If Polygon and SentientAGI focus on technological innovation, BFI_Impact exemplifies Nailwal's original intention of "solving social problems with technology," which is closely tied to his early experiences of poverty. From being unable to attend classes due to unpaid fees while standing outside the classroom to bearing family burdens at the age of ten and earning school fees by tutoring students, the hardships of his early life made him deeply aware of the importance of technological inclusiveness.
BFI_Impact, as a public welfare platform focused on social value, is centered on leveraging Polygon's blockchain technology to promote financial inclusiveness and fair resource distribution. In rural India, it addresses the financial service challenges of the "unbanked population" through on-chain identity verification; in education, it builds a transparent donation platform to ensure that funding reaches impoverished students accurately. This model of "commercial success benefiting society" not only enhances the social acceptance of Web3 in India but also proves to the world that blockchain technology can transcend speculative attributes and become a practical tool for social progress.
3. Personal Traits and Value of the Era: The "Flag Bearer" Gene of Indian Web3
Sandeep Nailwal's ability to become the global spokesperson for Indian Web3 stems from both unique qualities shaped by personal experience and the critical needs of industry development, with a value that far exceeds that of a single entrepreneur.
From a personal level, the "resilience born in adversity" and "commitment to long-termism" are the core secrets of his success. The survival instincts forged from childhood poverty enabled him to adhere to his technological aspirations even when Polygon faced bankruptcy multiple times, resisting the temptation of short-term profits; while his wife's encouragement, "You will never be happy like this," led him to give up a stable job to pursue entrepreneurship, a courage to break through that is essential for frontier innovation. More importantly, he has always maintained the original intention of technological inclusiveness—transforming Polygon into a developer-friendly platform, allowing small and medium-sized teams to use blockchain technology at low cost, fundamentally translating his experience of "changing fate through education and technology" into ecological value that empowers global developers.
From the industry's perspective, Nailwal's practices provide a replicable model for the development of Web3 in emerging markets. First, he has proven the feasibility of "localization of technology + globalization of ecology"—Polygon starts from India but is not limited to the local market, achieving global expansion through compatibility with the Ethereum ecosystem; second, he has explored the "balance between compliance and innovation"—during the regulatory fluctuations in India, he promoted the compliant development of the industry through cooperation with traditional enterprises and participation in policy formulation; third, he has constructed an "innovative network of cross-domain collaboration"—integrating blockchain with AI and public welfare, breaking technology silos and finding more landing scenarios for Web3.
From a global perspective, Nailwal's rise has rewritten the power dynamics of global Web3. Previously, this field was dominated by entrepreneurs from Europe and the United States in rule-making, and through the technological output and ecological co-construction of Polygon, he has positioned India alongside the US and Singapore as a core hub in Web3. In 2025, he plans to establish a $200 million fund in collaboration with the co-founder of Reddit to invest in local Indian social platforms and gaming ecosystems, further reflecting his strategic vision of "local innovation radiating globally," securing more discourse power for emerging markets in the digital economy era.
4. Conclusion: A Milestone from "Personal Achievement" to "Industry Awakening"
Sandeep Nailwal's selection in the (Economic Times) 40 Under 40 Elite List essentially reflects the transition of India's Web3 ecosystem from "single-point breakthroughs" to "systematic rise." He has used Polygon to solve the infrastructure bottlenecks of blockchain, explored the ethical boundaries of cutting-edge technology with SentientAGI, and practiced the social mission of technological inclusiveness with BFI_Impact. Together, these three form a global competitiveness of "strong technology, advanced concepts, and positive values."
For the industry, the lesson from this event is that the true value of Web3 lies not in token speculation but in solving real problems through technological innovation and promoting ecological co-construction; for emerging markets, Nailwal's story proves that as long as one seizes the opportunities of technological transformation, barriers to development can be broken, securing a place in the global innovation landscape. In the future, with the advancement of the Polygon 2.0 strategy and the technical landing of SentientAGI, this "flag bearer" emerging from the slums of Delhi may lead Indian Web3 to write a more grand chapter on the global stage, and his selection is just the beginning of this revolution.@Polygon