Technology has always propelled the world in various directions creating a positive connecting impact on a global level with ease.
As we move closer to a border-less world, we are encouraged and driven by technology and decentralization as centralization is no longer sustainable due to larger populations with audiences and greater individual requirements taking the front seat.
Driving past villages this weekend, on a quick weekend getaway, I happened to notice the change in India that no one could have imagined few years ago. Schools and Technology Institutes dotted our map as we passed these newly built structures aiming to take India to a higher altitude. Farmers, moving sugarcane in their overloaded trucks, were loud and chatty on their Smartphones as they drove through the country to deliver their wares. There were mobile stores in the smallest of villages and posters of Internet Service Providers and their tariffs all over the place.
Discussions have been rampant in terms of decentralizing the Internet further by moving away from Internet Service Providers and into the realm of hot air balloons, drones and more interestingly, Jeff Garziks, Dunvegan Decentralized Space Solutions. Intent on delivering a Bitcoin node in the sky, plans for a Low Earth Orbitter have been realised and are close to lift off.
Bitcoin is the Internet of Money. It connects people to each other and removes boundaries of engagement, similar to the Internet.
* India occupies 2.8% of the world’s land area but supports over 17.5% of the world’s population. At the 2001 census, 72.2% of the population lived in about 6,38,000 villages, and the remaining 27.8% lived in more than 5,100 towns and over 380 urban agglomerations.*
** A report on the Financial Exclusion in India suggests that 41% of India is Unbanked.** This is a number derived from 203 million households in India. A total of 40% of the unbanked reside in urban areas and the rest remain in rural areas. This is a win for technology as the world begins to realise that the stage to enable and simplify money transaction and the ability to freely transfer value is now set.
Most of these lessons helped us design Coinsecure to be user friendly and enabling. With one of the simplest methods of getting involved with Bitcoin in India using bank-level security and strict AML and KYC guidelines built in, Coinsecure gets set to focus on enabling a larger audience in India.
Our primary focus rests on building an Exchange capable of handling high volumes and lightning fast trades to enable existing traders to gain a transparent and self-managed platform.
We continue in that direction as we prepare to launch our Private Order System, Merchant Platform, API, and we will follow that with an enabler, which will further reduce the barriers between 203 million households in India.
We work with a vision to be leaders in this space as India grows and changes, diversifies and enables even the weakest at the remotest with the best.
Over 750 Indians are now a part of Bitcoin meetups across India. Spread across Bangalore, Mumbai, Delhi, Chennai, Hyderabad and Kolkatta, these groups are active and gather every month to explore new possibilities in Bitcoin.
The recent Bitcoin Bangalore Creativiy Crew meetup at the Microsoft Research center in Bangalore created an awareness of a new technology as people discussed alternative uses of the Blockchain and the uses of it for micro-finance and colored coins.
As the next logical step in several remote areas of India is a community currency, there were discussions around colored coins and how they could transfer value with a single satoshi. The group will focus on development of the Bitcoin ecosystem apart from other initiatives.
The Bangalore Bitcoin meetup group was started in 2012 and has over 450 members. Host to the Global Bitcoin Conference, a first for India, which was held in Bangalore. Starting from coffee shops, to open source labs, the meetups were creative and enabled several entrepreneurs to build up. The group meets once or twice a month and invites anyone to participate in a well organized discussion. The group was also responsible for organizing the well covered Global Bitcoin Conference at the Sheraton earlier this year.
Initiatives that have come out of this group include coimonk.com, unocoin.com, The Bitcoin card company, and several others who have added to the voice and Crypto Infrastructure that India now supports.
The Bombay Bitcoin meetup group enabled Kolonial’s to accept Bitcoin. Kolonial’s are the first bar in India which accepts Bitcoin. Nesteled in a cozy part of Mumbai’s bustling financial machine, this is a testament to the work conducted in enabling merchants by the meetup group.
What comes next for them would be more important as people add to this growing meetup which has over 175 members already. An active community that has several interests and initiatives in mind including bitterco.in which seems to be run by a focused individual who has shown tremendous commitment to the Bitcoin community.
The Bitcoin in Delhi meetup is a new group focused on working towards enabling Bitcoin and teaching more people about it. Led by a crypto expert and some very involved Bitcoiners, get prepared to meet with early adopters, miners, developers and a host of people getting ready to take Bitcoin to the capital of India.
The Chennai Bitcoin meetup group which was started recently has seen a nice group of people join in and they seem ready to go as well. Expect a similar crowd to gain force as the days pass. Over 20 members in the first few days since it began, will be great to see it grow.
The Hyderabad group and the Kolkatta groups have been started and intend to host meetups in their respective cities. These groups are still young and will grow large over the next few weeks.
The meetup scene is still in its infancy as India has a large geography. More cities need to participate in order for it to grow. A veritable library of information and opportunity, these meetups help build start-ups and enable entrepreneurship before all else.
The platform used popularly is meetup.com. This has enabled all the above meetups to start and grow.
aBitsocial.com is a social network created by a Bitcoiner from India in order to get like minded people together. A solid platform, aBitsocial enables events, blogs, chats and several other necessary tools in order to organize meetups as well. Still at an early stage release, hoping to see this grow in the future.
The meetup website had over 40 RSVP’s for the first Bitcoin meetup that we had at Microsoft Ventures Accelerator. 20 participants came on time to explore some new possibilities in the Crypto-currency space.
Our first Meetup at Microsoft Ventures Accelerator
As this was the first meetup, we discussed a short presentation, scraped from around the Internet, to introduce newbies to the Bitcoin concept.
Suprisingly, although we have had a healthy ecosystem for Bitcoiners in Bangalore, almost all the people who attended were new. Developers, Entreprenuers, Startup Founders, NGO Workers and more developers gathered to understand the scope of what this technology could offer.
Post a quick sign up at the front desk, we ran through a short presentation that outlined some basic aspects of Bitcoin. Several questions were asked and were answered as to my best ability. The questions ranged from its legality, to its block size to problems associated with it, and opportunities that stem from problems.
A short little break with soft drinks and snacks, enabled everyone to network a bit and catch up with people.
The group then came back together for a group discussion which enabled exchange of ideas and an understanding into the application of Bitcoin technology into various aspects ranging from public verification systems to creation of colored coins and creating payment processors!
As this was the first meetup in the new format, we wound up with some discussions as to how we can proceed with the meetups and we set a short agenda on what can be expected over the next few months.
We get together at the same venue on the 25th of January 2014 at 14:00PM to continue our discussion and try to form groups that can enable various services across the ecosystem.
Several Meetup groups have evolved across India and more are in the Making. If you are in any of the below mentioned cities, do join a bunch of active like minded Bitcoiners and help the Community grow.
Jeff Garzik makes up for a substantial portion of the Bitcoin development team. Self-described as a Husband, father, Linux kernel, cloud computing, Bitcoin, armchair foreign policy nerd & kinda sorta libertarian.
Jeff Garzik is an American Red Hat engineer and Bitcoin developer. He studied at the Georgia Institute of Technology and currently is employed by Red Hat as a kernel developer. He is also the founder of BitcoinWatch, a website for statistics in Bitcoin. Garzik wrote the original push-pool daemon used by all of the pooled miners today. He’s also the original author of ethtool. As an advocate of Austrian economics, Garzik argues that the deflationary aspect of Bitcoin makes it a superior currency and that the decentralized nature means it’s a fairer means of commerce.
Bitcoins technical side has been covered in great volume, so I requested a few opinions from Jeff Garzik during our discussion below.
Chinwag with Jeff Garzik
Question: What is the most non-technical way to explain Bitcoin?
Answer: A global Internet currency with no central bank or controlling authority.
Question: When is Bitcoin-qt likely to come out of Beta?
Answer: When “lightweight client” mode is fully functional and tested.
Perhaps a year or two.
Question: Do you see Bitcoin as the end product or are there forked technologies that may take over as the anonymous currency of choice?
Answer: Bitcoin is just the beginning of a brand new category of algorithms. Bitcoin itself may fail, but it is the first of a new category of “crypto-currencies” based on the proof-of-work algorithm method.
Question: How is the Bitcoin development team funded?
Answer: Gavin Andresen is very recently employed full time by the BitcoinFoundation. All other developers are unpaid volunteers.
Question: What is your Vision on the future of money?
Answer: Bitcoin, the Euro, the US Dollar, China’s RMB will all exist on an even playing field. You may choose which type of currency you hold in your wallet, and transact with.
Question: Any thoughts on Bitcoin in India?
Answer: Would be great! Among other things, Bitcoin is great for low-fee remittances from relatives overseas to those at home.
2013 was expected to be a big year for Bitcoin in India, with small Exchanges emerging and IndiaBitcoin coming up fast as a one-stop-shop for Bitcoin in India. As Jeff’s last answer had suggested, remittance is a huge opportunity for Bitcoin in India and there is an initiative being planned for a service rollout this year as well.
Remittances is a growing market in India. Currently dominated by banks or Hawala operators (Interpol Hawala Document), Bitcoin can instantly change this market bringing about a tremendous positive change to the way remittances can occur. Thanks to the global ledger capabilities in the blockchain. This change can even be driven and adopted by the remittance companies and banks currently operating in India.
As a progressive regulator of this 1.2B population economy, the RBI have recently increased their cap for remittances from US $25,000 to US $200, 000 under the Liberalised Remittance Scheme of USD 200, 000this was upgraded from the original document that can be found here.
Feel free to Donate @ 1NvQuPB4L2hkJtY6NiNw9fLT1HQMYLfC4b
Over the past few weeks, there has been a surge of queries on my Blog’s public comment board and a stream of e-mails requesting help with a moot proposition. A moot proposition is a fictional case worked out by law students. During one of the moot propositions, Bitcoin made its debut. I am hoping to summarize some of those questions in this post below.
This article will outline the conversations between several students seeking more information on Bitcoins legal status and classification. Links have been provided at the end of this article for further reference, all of which have been studied thoroughly for traces of Bitcoins characteristics. A few of the discussions have already been recorded under the second half of the page’s comments at this link. I am also amending some of the answers that I had replied in order to summarize the posts.
The moot proposition that started it all can be downloaded here as a PDF file.
Summaries from different individuals, Some of the Questions that came up from this case were:
Question: My moot problem (which is fictitious) is based on a person being arrested for dealing in bitcoins. He exchanged 5000 bitcoins for Rs.36, 00, 000/- you seem to have a lot of knowledge on the subject. Was wondering if you could help? I haven’t really been able to grasp the concept of bitcoins to begin with, secondly as per your blog bitcoins are being mined in India and so could be considered a domestic currency. Is there a limit on how much you can transact of something to that effect?
Reply: Bitcoin can be considered a domestic currency, as it can be mined using Indian Electricity. It is a debatable topic. There are no transaction limits, however there is a finite number of Bitcoins that will ever be mined into existence. As the demand for Bitcoin increases, so will its value.
Question: I just want to know whether bitcoins are regulated by FEMA, 1999 or RBI regulations. If bitcoins purchased in a foreign nation and exchanging it to an authorised money exchanger in India without special or general permission from RBI amounts to an offence of money laundering?
Reply: It cannot come under FEMA because Bitcoins can be mined in India as well, Making it a domestic software. Anytime Bitcoin comes in Contact with Fiat, it moves into the grey are of the law. However cash and P2P networks are nearly impossible to regulate – Good example would be Bit torrent, we all know that it is used for illegal file sharing, but it cannot be shut down due to its decentralized nature. Even though the authorities and regulators know about it.
Question: If a person making transaction in Bitcoin is arrested by economic offences wing of police and charged for the offences of FEMA and prevention of money laundering stating that dealing with Bitcoin using fiat needs permission of RBI, then how could he defend himself from?
Reply: But where does it state by the RBI that Bitcoins cannot be used? Once again Bitcoin to Fiat rests in the grey area of the law. As far as money laundering is concerned, this is more prevalent with cash than Bitcoin. As long as taxes are paid and income is declared and nothing illegal is undertaken, why would Money Laundering come into the picture as well? There is nothing related to Bitcoin in any countries laws. Bitcoin was developed to solve these problem.
Question:
Does dealing in bitcoins violate the provisions of Foreign Exchange Management Act, 1999 specifically Section – 3, 4, 7, 13 and moreover does it violate any Foreign trade and exchange laws or any RBI regulations or guidelines.
Is Bitcoin a currency under the Foreign Exchange Management Act, 1999 and if not then why?
Reply:
As Bitcoin can be mined in India itself, it cannot be classified as an International currency. Even if the coins are mined outside the country, it is very easy to mix the coins and anonymize the transaction. This typically cannot be regulated.
Bitcoin can be termed as a currency as can Rice and Salt. At the same time, all these currencies can be termed as commodities as well. Bitcoin is a unique set of characters which have value due to the fact that they are scare and hard to mine.
There is nothing like Bitcoin in any current Indian regulation.
Question: Can Bitcoins be termed as currency under the definition provided by FEMA. On this line, if we can prove that they are Currency and FEMA is attracted, then we can go on to say that some RBI regulations are required to make such currency legal in India. Therefore, mainly I wanted your opinion on the issue whether Bitcoins can be covered under the definition of currency provided under Section 2(h) of the FEMA.
Answer: Bitcoin is an item of trade used to buy and sell various goods and services. It is also a piece of software that can be sold or bought by anyone who puts a price on It gathers value from the users and people who create and mine Bitcoin. If a currency needs to be issued by a governing body the Bitcoin cannot be classified as a currency.
Bitcoin is a commodity and a currency. It is the same as Gold or Precious stones.
My Views
As Bitcoin is open source and unregulated, it is free game for everyone. It has been a tremendous investment in 2012 and surges forward in 2013 as well. Any government that decides to regulate, control or outlaw Bitcoin only faces the problem of creating more value in Bitcoin due to its uniqueness. Bitcoin is nothing more than a unique and secure way of sending a string of numbers from one person to another. Due to tremendous merchant adoption as a token of value, Bitcoin races the charts at all the global exchanges every single day. The Bitcoin network is the strongest combined computational force in existence. Strengthened by millions of users, this network cannot be hacked into or have any of its parameters changed.
The importance of leveraging the economics of Bitcoin is more valuable today than the technology side of it. It was compared to the internet by Aaron Koenig, when he said “Bitcoin is like the decentralized internet. Not everyone knows how the internet works, packet switching, TCP/IP, etc., but we all know how to use the internet. And we do it every single day.
I plan to stay on course with my dedication to Bitcoin, expanding into newer and deeper economics and application development. As long as Bitcoin is not used illegally and taxes are paid in a currency accepted by the Government, It is cross border open-banking at its finest.
With Indiabitcoin.com all set to integrate India with Bitcoin, one can only hope that more adoption will follow.
Energy decentralization has been a dream for several worldwide organizations and communities supporting a clean green environment.
Gogreensolar.com is a market leader in solar panels, batteries, charge controllers, and solar mounting hardware. Loaded with an energy savings calculator and technical support for installation and troubleshooting, this could be the answer to Bitcoins electricity hungry nature.
I caught up with the COO of Gogreensolar for a quick Chinwag on their initiatives and Business model.
Harold Tan: COO of Gogreensolar
1.Tell us a bit about your vision and mission for Gogreensolar.com.
Hi Benson, our vision is simple – change the world with green energy. Our environments are toxic, communities are exploited, and we’re on a collision course for a dead end if things don’t change. We’re here to help make that change, and our mission achieves it by bringing awareness and access to effective green energy solutions.
2.Would be great if we could see a graph of Gogreensolars growth since inception.
Unfortunately we can’t provide that graph, but we can say that we’re undergoing tremendous growth and can always utilize more team members!
3.How did you hear about Bitcoin? How did you’ll make the decision to go with it as a payment option?
From a good friend in the financial services industry. The values of Bitcoin and energy independence seem to be aligned. Bitcoin is a decentralized economic tool, and we see energy moving toward a decentralized model. We support systemic decentralization (like the internet), and partner with entities of similar values.
4.Any Bitcoin orders so far?
Yes! Big thanks to Redditors for helping get the word out. Sorry for any initial confusion on the checkout process, we’re waiting for Shopify integration to have the purchase experience completely seamless, but we definitely do accept Bitcoins for any orders by phone or email.
5.What plans are in store for 2013-2014?
We have some very big projects lined up with major municipalities that I can’t talk about quite yet. But it will make news headlines. We have a lot going on behind the scenes beyond just selling parts 😉 We are also in talks with traditional investors regarding these big projects, but are exploring new investment models like crowd-sourced funding.
6.Any plans to go international with Gogreensolar?
We currently already service international clients, but don’t have any physical presence overseas. If there’s anybody international reading this article that would like to partner, drop us a line!
7.Any partnerships planned in the near future?
Many! The growth of our business ultimately depends on partnerships and relationships. Without people, without an integrated web of support, we would just be another retail shop buying and selling matter. We’re here to do much more than that, we’re here to improve the way we produce and consume energy. Join us!
That was a nutshell of Gogreensolars plans, vision and dedication to Energy and Decentralization. I am hoping that a few Business cases can emerge based on this adoption of Bitcoin.
A superb event at the Centre for Internet & Society was organized on the 23rd of January 2013. The all star team at the CIS (http://cis-india.org/) was awesome at organizing this event for Bitcoin. Live Streaming, Mainstream Newspaper coverage and Twitter based Q&A made this the first Bitcoin Event in India that leveraged these mediums of information transfer.
Aaron Koenig gave a talk on the creation and use of Bitcoin, and on a payment system designed for the voting process of the Bitfilm Festival for Digital Film. Since the year 2000, the Bitfilm Festival has been showcasing films that use digital technology in a creative and innovative way. It takes place on the Internet. However, physical screenings of the films will be held in Bangalore and in Hamburg. Each of the 59 nominated digital animations has its own Bitcoin account, and users worldwide may vote by donating Bitcoins to the films they like anonymously and without any transfer costs. The donated money will be divided among the most popular films (the films with the most votes/Bitcoins).
A strong knowledgeable speaker, Aaron brought forward his tremendous knowledge of Bitcoin, Art & Economics.
The Twitter based Q&A can be viewed on the Twitter ID’s of
@pranesh_prakash
@cis_india
@bensonsamuel
The Newspaper Articles where Bitfilm & Bitcoin made their news in India were
Localbitcoins.com has easily been the most pervasive Bitcoin Exchange of 2012. A Plug and Play system which allows for Face to Face or Local area transactions.
Localbitcoins.com comes with an inbuilt Escrow, multi-factor authentication and an inbuilt wallet. Built on GPS technology, this nifty service tracks the location of users who wish to buy and sell Bitcoin.
I was fortunate to catch up with Jeremias Kangas (Chief of Localbitcoins) for a quick interview on his initiatives for Bitcoin.
Interview with Jeremias Kangas @kangasbros
Tell me a bit about yourself. Where are you from? What was the tipping point for you to get involved in Bitcoin? How big is your team?
I’m from Finland, been programming since I was a kid. I first heard about Bitcoin on november 2010, just before I went backpacking to India for a month. After that I started working on various bitcoin projects as a hobby, and soon noticed that it is consuming 90% of my time. Then I decided to go full-time retard on Bitcoin, move on from my previous work. Now I’m trying to make a living as a bitcoin entrepreneur 🙂
Our team consists of me, my brother and couple of part-time freelancers. My brother is currently doing a master thesis at university, so I have loads of work trying to keep this going forward! I hope my brother completes his thesis quickly 🙂
Do you think that Bitcoin is ready for the mass adoption and use? If No, Why not? If Yes, How can it spread faster?
I personally believe in solving the scaling problems as they come. Engineers tend to overstress scaling issues, even when they aren’t a real problem yet. Look at twitter, for example – it was constant failwhale when the site was becoming popular, still the concept succeeded pretty heavily.
I think the best marketing strategy for Bitcoin is to market it towards startups and innovative small companies. I have been myself doing this kind of promotion in the finnish startup scene. I’m pretty sure that soon we will be seeing startups popping up around bitcoin like mushrooms!
Big companies tend to be conservative and slow, and one of Bitcoin’s strengths lies in enabling new kind of business models. This is the reason why I believe that startups will bring the change faster.
I see that you are involved in several Bitcoin projects. Would you be able to give us a short summary of all the initiatives that you are working on.
– LocalBitcoins.com – our main effort currently, and probably the most known project
– Bitcoin/payments-hackathon – Have been organizing these events in Finland and once in Berlin. The idea is a weekend of completing some Bitcoin-related project, and publishing it. I really like this kind of “hacker events”.
As Localbitcoins is a well known site, any future plans of adding an international online exchange as well?
We are doing tools for those who want to do online trade as well. However not traditional order-book-based exchange. More like a toolset for setting up a fixed-rate online exchange – allow anyone to setup fixed-rate online exchange in any country, with any payment methods! That is the vision anyway, let’s see how it will look in practice.
We just recently released this “escrow” feature in localbitcoins. It basically tries to automate the selling process, making it both safe, efficient and quick for both participants. We have been getting some good feedback, and plan working on the concept based on how people use the feature etc.
Any road map for 2013? Any partnerships envisioned?
I will be working 24/7 on everything bitcoin related, but localbitcoins will be the main focus. No partnerships yet, however we are open to any ideas.
Any thoughts on Bitcoin in India?
I love India! Have been backbacking there couple of times. I think bitcoin would be much more revolutionary in country like India, than for example country like Finland. Some things:
– When I was traveling there, smaller shops had often change problems. Bitcoin could solve this in the future 🙂
– Online bookings (hostels, trains, etc) were pain in the ass, I never got my international visa working. Bitcoin could help with this as well.
– I’ve heard India has nowadays more and more native, born-global startups, and there is strong startup movement emerging. Bitcoin could be really the technology to get Indian startups off the ground! Cost-effective way to pivot your product on global marketplace.
I hope that I will be able to do my next backpacking trip to India with Bitcoin! 🙂
Localbitcoins.com is the most recommended Exchange in India right now. This has enabled a lot of trades and people get onboard every day.
Wishing everyone a Happy and prosperous 2013 and hopes of effective solutions to enable the permeation of Bitcoin into our everyday lives.
Yes, Seriously. WordPress and Paymium aside, Coinabul is a Bitcoin company that provides more validation to the success and stability of Bitcoin. Coinabul is the first Bitcoin to Gold resource available to the Bitcoin marketplace.
I caught up with the Chief of Coinabul Jay Shore and got a few thoughts from him about Coinabul, Bitcoin & regulations.
1. Tell me a bit about yourself. Where are you from? What was the tipping point for you to get involved in Bitcoin? How big is your team?
I’ve got a background in computer science dating back more than a decade, with an emphasis on web application development. We’re based in the USA, and the key figures in our team have been involved in Bitcoin for years- I personally have always found the technology appealing from a development and day-trading viewpoint ever since I heard about it around the later part of 2010.
2. Do you think that Bitcoin is ready for the mass adoption and use? If No, Why not? If Yes, How can it spread faster?
Bitcoin is certainly ready for widespread adoption. Whether it’s viable for someone who is not technically inclined to become a Bitcoin user is relatively undetermined- as young as Bitcoin is there are a lot of services which make it easy for new users who are not technically savvy to use the platform, and large corporate supporters such as WordPress who advocate for and provide tools for widespread adoption. The main thing that will bring Bitcoin into a more widely consumed state will be market stability, I feel- this will let new users feel more confident, veterans less skittish, and new businesses join in without hesitation.
3. Any big news to be announced to the world? Something new from Coinabul which is right around the corner?
There is nothing particularly new happening for Coinabul customers with the exception of even faster processing times, as well as cheaper shipping for all of our international clients. We have recently renegotiated rates with our shipping carriers such that we are able to bring our rates for clients down a fair bit.
4. What is your roadmap for 2013-2014?
Mainly, our goal for 2013 is to increase efficiency as we scale, and continue to grow as substantially as we have in 2012. This entails a huge amount of work in various ways, which I won’t get into here as it’s really quite mundane and tedious. However, I will outline some of our primary goals: grow the amount and variety of stock we have on hand at any given point, increase the number of employees and premises we have, decrease processing times, and increase the frequency as well as size of orders which we process.
5. Any Partnerships that you envision to enable faster growth of Coinabul?
We are exploring critical growth partnerships with various entities to help us continue to improve our product offering, although I cannot really get into that in a public medium.
6. What are the legality aspects of Coinabul? Does Metal to BTC/ BTC to Metal rest in the grey area of law or is it unregulated?
BTC/precious metals exchange is a very complicated endeavor both from a legal and a logistics perspective. We encounter huge amounts of legal constraint as a fringe service operator in a regulated market, but we have amazing legal minds who keep us compliant within, and voluntarily above and beyond, the bounds of regulations that we are obligated to follow.
7. What kind of effort goes into running a growing business like Coinabul? Any challenges that are pressed at you every day?
The primary hurdles we overcome tend to be fairly standard in terms of a company experiencing massive and rapid growth. As a fixture in the Bitcoin community for more than a year, we have established a huge amount of trust which generates larger and larger daily volumes for us. While we grow, we have to do all of the fun things that are required for expanding businesses but on a much more accelerated curve.
8. What advice can you share for budding entrepreneurs?
As far as advice I can give to budding entrepreneurs, I can only recommend a few things:
Do what you love;
Stay dedicated to your projects, but if it’s not taking off you have to cut your losses and move forward or reformulate your model;
Don’t quit your day job until your startup requires you to do so;
Build the right team early on since you can’t do every task by yourself as you scale;
Don’t be afraid of change- it is innovation as well as hard work that powers your startup.
9. Any thoughts on Bitcoin in India?
India is a growing Bitcoin market, and I see more and more services and users coming out of India day to day.
In a world of Bitcoin entrepreneurs, Coinabul seems to have taken some of the biggest risks in the market and listening to Jay talk about their viral growth, there is no doubt that they are an entity to watch as Bitcoin covers the globe.
Maintaining 24/7 updated prices, a provision for voice based customer service, dipping shipping costs and a well accredited team makes these guys one of the earliest Bitcoin success stories.
Mobilecozy came into the payments market earlier this year and have been pursuing an effective & steady drive to network and promote their white label mPOS product. They are currently in a pre-launch phase.
Sainath Gupta is founder & CEO of MobileCozy. An entrepreneur and businessman from a remarkably early age, Sainath is forging a path through rough regulated waters to simplify card payments.
Sainath Gupta, CEO Of Mobilecozy @sainathgupta
As with any software company, Mobilecozy is also working on a SaaS project with a European client. The project they are working on is an NFC + Bitcoin initiative. As a consultant to their Bitcoin project, I was requested to present Cryptocurrencies, Bitcoin & Paradigm shifts in the Indian Payments ecosystem at the summit as part of a panel discussion.
The Event
Knowledgefaber
Knowledgefaber is facts based consulting and research firm. With technology advancements, consumers today can pay for their transactions in more than one way. But 97% of people in India still complete their transactions using cash. This is seen by them as a huge opportunity for new methods & technologies for payments and is the reason behind this summit.
The summit aims to bring together experts from Prepaid, M payments, other payment players, BFSI, Payment tech enablers & software companies and discuss the way ahead.
The conference had a mix of traditional bankers and emerging payments companies in the audience.
The Panel Discussion
The topics of discussion were:
Emergence of new payment methods – How the increasing use and adoption of payment methods like prepaid cards, m-payments ( Mobile card readers, NFC based payment systems, mobile wallets etc.), electronic payment gateways and e-wallets are challenging incumbent methods (credit/debit cards etc.)
Payment landscape in developed v/s emerging countries – How the affluence and technology maturity in various countries affect the choices of payment methods (Special emphasis on India)
Which payment methods will face least resistance in terms of consumer adoption and why – globally and in India?
Which segment of new payment methods will see maximum competition? What will be the niche areas to target for new entrants?
How various entities/stakeholders, currently active in payment industries have to evolve to stay relevant? (Banks, Visa/Mastercard, Payment gateway companies, merchants etc.)
Conclusion: Identifying next winners in the payment industry – globally and in India.
I was honored to be a part of the panel which included:
Vipul Vohra – Engagement Manager at Knowledgefaber & Moderator
Neel Chowdhury – Co-founder and COO, Giftloop and Former CMO, Obopay
Kunnal Sharma – Business Head, Global Remittances, TimesofMoney
Bhavin Satikunvar – AVP, Internet and mobile banking, Dhanlaxmi Bank
Vipul Vohra started the discussion by presenting us with a few numbers from the global cash based economies.
USA has a cash usage of 60%.
EU has a cash usage of 78%.
India stands at 97% cash usage.
This outlines the number of opportunities for players who want to involve in the payments landscape. Electronic & Mobile wallets, gateways and micropayments are forming a strong area of opportunity.
Kunnal Sharma
Speaking about the global trends in payments, Kunnal painted a picture of the payment landscape in the US. He also spoke about mPesa in Kenya and how the landscape was shifting in India. He spoke about the history of payments and the evolutionary path.
He felt that people were not ready for Mobile in India and going mobile will not solve too many immediate problems. He had an approach which was to respond to demand rather than to create demand. He attempted to drop a few case studies similar to Brett Kings Bank 2.0 in terms of future bankers of our youth.
He spoke about the lack of infrastructure and the poor 3G networks in India. He mentioned that most phones in Japan were waterproof because most youth bring their phones to the shower. He felt that the RBI was progressive, supportive and willing to enable more players in the money market.
He reacted negatively when he heard about Bitcoin being open source. He mentioned “If trust and convenience is there, the payment industry lets you make money. I am of the firm opinion and I don’t really like the players who come to the market and say that it’s free to the consumer. No, the consumer wants to pay money. The payment industry need to make money at the end of the day and if we start to discount products, then the industry is not going to make money.”
Neel Choudhary @neelspeak
A thought leader in India today, Neel is the Co-Founder and COO for Giftloop. A social payments company, Giftloop is in a pre-launch stage. His vision for emerging payments rests with Mobile & Social payments.
He was vocal about the success of mPesa in Kenya and spoke of the issues regarding India. Adoption and Awareness are two areas of opportunity in India. He stressed on the security of Mobile Payments, when he stated correctly, ‘is Safer than Cash’. He feels that cash will never die, however transactions with cash will reduce.
Mobile payments will take off; it is only a matter of time. He feels strongly that mobile payments and mobile money will explode in India due to its 1.2B population. Neel rightly pointed out that technology builds are not a high cost problem these days.
He predicts social payments with mobile as a principal driver in payments. Collaboration will play a pivotal role in bringing in newer payment methods to challenge cash.
Bhavin Satikunvar
A banking veteran, Bhavin brought forward several consumer level problems such as ease of use and adoption. He maintained a non-opinionated stance and spoke about a progressive India. He mentioned areas of awareness as well. Customer on boarding is also a problem being faced by Banks today.
Bhavin rightly pointed out that the B2B payments market is yet to explode in India as well, and there is a dire requirement for it. The interchange charge reduction was also proposed by Bhavin.
He praised the RBI (Reserve Bank of India), mentioning that they were extremely cooperative and are working closely with Banks to encourage more initiatives to cover the unbanked population in India.
Benson Samuel
I presented my views of unbanked Indians. At 41% of the population unbanked, it is a huge opportunity for Cryptocurrencies and emerging payment methods. I spoke of the viral growth of Bitcoin in the recent years and its inevitable entry into India.
I mentioned the paradigm shift across the planet, bringing forth new technologies in banking such as Dwolla, Carrier billers and even the cash based network in Pakistan got a mention. Mobile money is inevitable. It is safer, faster, cheaper and more pervasive than cash or cards.
I spun a few heads when I went through a checklist of Bitcoins features.
No POS required.
No Chargebacks
Open Source
Over US $ 100mn in circulation in just 3 years
Instant Money Transfer
Powerful P2P network
Global Ledger Book
No Double Spending
No counterfeiting
I finished my bit by evangelizing the movement of even lower income individuals from feature phones to Smartphone’s. Bitcoin & Mobile are here to stay was my prediction.
Closing
Inspiring to hear that the RBI is open yet cautious. ‘RBI is the most progressive regulator in the world.’ was stated by all my co-panelists. I would most certainly want to see what they have in store for Bitcoin in the coming years.
Needless to say that Bitcoin is way ahead of its time in India. The traditional bankers were certainly not ready for Bitcoin, and the emerging Payment companies had a smile when they heard about it.
Our 3rd Meetup in Bangalore
We wound up our 3rd successful Meetup with 5 Bitcoiners last Thursday. We discussed easy ways to get merchants to adopt Bitcoin and several points of true value were discussed during our meeting. A few monetary systems were discussed post which, we were teased with the knowledge that a working INR – BTC exchange was around the corner.
Post the Meetup I received a mail from a friend in a neighboring state requesting me to represent his company at an Emerging Payments Summit in Bangalore. Due to a last minute shift in plans, the CEO of the progressive mPOS solution company called Mobilecozy was unable to make it to the event.
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