India state refiner HPCL uses blockchain to verify purchase orders

Indiaโ€™s state-run refiner Hindustan Petroleum (HPCL), one of Indiaโ€™s largest oil and gas companies, is launching a blockchain system to enable automated verification of purchase orders (POs).

HPCL has partnered with the blockchain software firm Zupple Labs to integrate its blockchain-based digital credentialing technology into the purchase order system, the firms said in a joint announcement.

Called LegitDoc, Zupple Labsโ€™ verification tech enables HPCL to issue digital POs to its vendors without having to manually verify the PO requests. From a third-party verifierโ€™s perspective, the project provides a facility to directly verify the validity of POs in an automated way on the HPCL website.

โ€œThe implementation helps to automate the verification of HPCL POs to external parties,โ€ a spokesperson for HPCL told Cointelegraph. โ€œThis works by integrating the blockchain system with HPCLโ€™s internal e-PO and generates tamper-evident verifiable POs,โ€ the representative noted, adding:

โ€œThese POs will be dispatched to vendors which in turn can be shared with third parties. Any third-party verifier can directly verify these POs on the HPCL vendor portal verification application.โ€

According to the HPCL spokesperson, the company has been collaborating with Zupple Labs on the blockchain project over the past six months. โ€œHPCL has completed building the blockchain PO system successfully and the same facility will be made official to the vendors within this month,โ€ the representative stated.

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The spokesperson said that HPCL has implemented the blockchain-based PO system on both private blockchain and public blockchain.

According to Zupple Labs co-founder and business lead Neil Martis, the PO verification system has involved the implementation of โ€œtwo parallel blockchainsโ€ used as settlement layers, including the public Near blockchain and the private Hyperledger Fabric blockchain. Martis noted that the latter was used as part of HPCLโ€™s Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery strategy. According to Zupple Labs, HPCL issued 3,000 POs via the facility as of mid-October 2023.

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