[UPDATED] Pre-Proposal: Dash India - Promoting Dash for Crypto-Remittances.

[Supreet Raju]

Promoting Dash for Remittances to India: World’s largest Remittance Market


Summary

This project aims to build the use of Dash for Remittances to India through a structured outreach program involving Market Research & Analysis, Online education and Growth Marketing.

It aims to present Dash as a better alternative to Bitcoin in the emerging crypto-remittances space in India.

The Market

India is the world’s largest Remittance market. With a 25 Million strong expatriate population, Indians send back $2800 every year on average, totalling $70 Billion USD every year.

According to a World Bank study, the median cost of transferring money has remained nearly constant at 7.2%, making money transfer a $4-5B/yr market for transfer companies like MoneyGram and Western Union and Banks (via Wire Transfer).

Recently, the Indian Government imposed an additional tax of 12.36% on remittance charges, making traditional remittances even more expensive to process. This makes the overall cost of sending money significantly higher than World Bank’s Sustainable development goal of 3%.

For expatriate workers, losing money, earned in often challenging circumstances to money transfer companies is a travesty. However, they have little recourse or choice, given the lack of credible options and high adoption of existing methods.

The Opportunity : A Glimpse of Times to Come

With a population similar to the entire continent of Africa and rapid penetration of internet through low fee 4G Data plans, India is on the cusp of a mobile-first internet revolution.

While money-transfer technology has remained stagnant, the growth of blockchain currencies has created an exciting alternate path for money transfer, leap-frogging existing channels.

A small set of early adopters have taken to Crypto, mainly Bitcoin, to remit money. While it is difficult to quantify exact numbers, the money transfer industry is going through a wave of silent disruption.

The procedure to remit money to India via Bitcoin is quite simple :

1. Remitter buys Bitcoin with Local Fiat
2. Remitter Sends Bitcoin to Receiver
3. Receiver sells Bitcoin on Exchange / Localbitcoins and receives Indian Rupees

Since retail prices for Bitcoin are 10-20% higher in India, every dollar sent also creates a net profit of 10-20% for the receiver, instead of a net loss of 8%. Overall, the gap between sending money through Bitcoin versus traditional channels can be between 18 to 28%.

This significant arbitrage opportunity means that there is enough buffer to cover the high Bitcoin mining fees quite comfortably.

Dash For Remittances to India

While Bitcoin has a clear headstart in terms of awareness and adoption in India, it is an acknowledged fact that Dash is far better suited to facilitate Remittances than Bitcoin.

Dash is instant, private and costs a negligible amount of money to send - features that are critical to Remittances, missing in Bitcoin.

With exchanges in India beginning to integrate with Dash, there is an opportunity to promote the use of Dash to consumers for remittances and present Dash as a credible option to consumers and close the gap with Bitcoin.

Project Execution : Remitdash.Com

This Project has 3 major goals, the execution plan for each is explained in the following section :

1. Market Research & Analysis

Out of the $70B sent by 25 Million expatriates to India each year, there are a large number of segments and corridors.

The first part of this project aims to study the various segments in this market and understand early adopter groups better for targeting in the later part of this campaign.

For Eg. The Middle East and North America are the top two remitting regional segments and the states of Punjab, Kerala are amongst the highest receivers of remittances.

2. Educational Video Content in English and Hindi (India’s main languages)

We aim to create a simple to understand videos in both Hindi and English, explaining how Dash can be used for Remittances to new users.

We aim to create two different versions of this video for users, walking users through the advantages of Dash and the process to make remittances.

By having both English and Hindi voiceovers, we can reach out to a massive Indian audience.

3. Marketing & Public Relation Blitz

To promote Dash as a alternative to Bitcoin for Remittances, we intend to target technically savvy users from segments identified via our project research.

Some marketing channels we aim to utilize for this are:

1. Google Adwords
2. Facebook Ads
3. Youtube Ads

Building blockchain usage for the remittance industry is newsworthy development and an emerging use-case for crypto-currencies.

We intend to generate awareness about Dash through targeted public relation activities through widely-read publications and online blogs.

About Us :

Supreet Raju is an education course designer, working at the intersection of Consumer Internet marketing and Learning Design. She is a Design graduate from the prestigious NIFT, New Delhi and a Gold Medalist from the 2010 batch, an honour accorded to the top student across 8 Centres of Excellence nationally.

She specializes in marketing through developing educational programs for technology and helping new users understand things better through compact online learning.

Budget Breakdown :

Amount Requested: 48 Dash/Month for 3 Months
(To be escrowed with Dash Core)

FAQs

Is it possible to buy and sell Dash in India?

Yes, Dash can directly be traded for fiat(INR). More exchanges are likely on the way.

 

[Showny M. Azar Raheb]

Hello Supreet Raju, greetings from Caracas, Venezuela.

I like the main idea of your proposal and its content. It's shown that you've made a good research and, of course, you know the reality of your country and how can it be improved. Furthermore, definitely it's an excellent strategy to boost DASH use and its adoption.

However, I'm not very clear if you are willing to do only market researchs and analysis with educational videos and marketing, as you explain in the "Project Execution", or if you're also willing to design and create a web page with the purpose of sending remmitances? I suggest you also to described how many videos are you thinking to make and with what content so other members can give you suggestions about these.

Congratulations! Education is the best way to improve our societies!

Wish you all the best and my support.

Showny.

 

[RobbyDash01]

I think there should definitely be some funding for you to work on a project with regards to India remittances using Dash.

You will need to provide some more detail about yourself and I strongly suggest you make some videos about your proposal. I recommend you include an example marketing or educational video spoken in Hindi.

My own opinion, the best way for new people to secure funding is to start smaller in funding and prove your work to the network. Unless you can demonstrate past project accomplishments and have support from existing Dash members I suggest you focus your first proposal on steps 1 and 2, and request less in Dash. But that is of course up to you to decide.

 

[Supreet Raju]

Hello Supreet Raju, greetings from Caracas, Venezuela.

I like the main idea of your proposal and its content. It's shown that you've made a good research and, of course, you know the reality of your country and how can it be improved. Furthermore, definitely it's an excellent strategy to boost DASH use and its adoption.

However, I'm not very clear if you are willing to do only market researchs and analysis with educational videos and marketing, as you explain in the "Project Execution", or if you're also willing to design and create a web page with the purpose of sending remmitances? I suggest you also to described how many videos are you thinking to make and with what content so other members can give you suggestions about these.

Congratulations! Education is the best way to improve our societies!

Wish you all the best and my support.

Showny.

Hi Showny, thanks for writing in. Appreciate your insights. For the points you have raised :

1. We will be developing 2 promotional videos that explain how Dash is beneficial to remittances and how Indians can make use of Dash to remit. These videos will be hosted on a landing page (www.remitdash.com - a domain we have already registered) but it will not be facilitating the transaction. It is a purely educational and informational experience to spread awareness. By bringing people to this page, we will then be able to retarget them via pixel for our ad campaigns.

We do not intend to become a transaction platform as there are many able and well-used websites for these transactions and we aim to make people Dash-aware so that they can channel these transactions better.

2. Re: The videos and their content, we will be developing two animation videos with voiceovers. Each video will be developed in Hindi & English voiceover for maximum reach. The content of the videos will be split in two components -
A. The benefits of Dash for remittances : Focusing on the current problem and highlighting the features of Dash like InstantSend & PrivateSend along with the low transaction fees.
B. How to Remit using Dash : Focusing on the process and points to keep in mind for Dash transactions.

I look forward to your feedback to help us improve our proposal ! Thank you.

 

[Supreet Raju]

I think there should definitely be some funding for you to work on a project with regards to India remittances using Dash.

You will need to provide some more detail about yourself and I strongly suggest you make some videos about your proposal. I recommend you include an example marketing or educational video spoken in Hindi.

My own opinion, the best way for new people to secure funding is to start smaller in funding and prove your work to the network. Unless you can demonstrate past project accomplishments and have support from existing Dash members I suggest you focus your first proposal on steps 1 and 2, and request less in Dash. But that is of course up to you to decide.

Hi Robby ! Thank you for writing in with your comments. We are going to develop a video as you suggested and add more information so our project goals and ability become clearer.

We are also escrowing this project with Dash-Core to backup our budget requests with timely deliverables.

We hope Dash members can understand the importance & scale of the Indian remittance market and support us. We'll try our best to clear all doubts.

 

[Arthyron]

Thanks for submitting your pre-proposal. I think this is a great idea, and I have a few questions/requests/ideas:

1. I notice you have a budget laid out, could you maybe be a bit more specific about how and why the Dash is being spent? As I understand it, this is just for an informational site about remittances and for promotional events where Dash is given out (correct me if I'm wrong). Knowing a bit more about what precisely you intend to do with the budget would be very helpful in increasing your chances of receiving funding.

2. For the incentive/giveaway portion of your project, you could consider working with @Dashmaximalist and his project which is distributing Dash to thousands of people already, which would cut your own costs dramatically and thereby increase the likelihood of your proposal passing. There have also been several successful proposals centered around digital advertisement passed by users like @feedbands and @pmckenna12, so those are people you'd want to talk to in order to see if there's anything they can teach you or any way you can coordinate your efforts. Any way you can reduce costs and cooperate with other users already established and working in the Dash ecosystem is a big bonus for your proposal.

3. How will your site interface with exchanges so that people who are intrigued by the idea can actually go and get some Dash? You described the process for Bitcoin remittances, so will the process for Dash be identical? If so, how accessible is Dash for Hindi-speaking audiences (i.e. do the services that provide Bitcoin to people in India also provide Dash as well)? If not, where will your site steer visitors who want to obtain Dash?

 

[Dashmaximalist]

@Supreet Raju like your proposal, I am quite well conversed about the details of the remittance industry so I would like to help you out in whichever way i can, I am making some videos about this exact topic, will release it soon.

 

[Supreet Raju]

@Dashmaximalist Thank you for your comment. You have done some phenomenal work for Dash and appreciate your understanding of the Indian Remittances Market. Let me connect with tomorrow with our plan.

 

[Supreet Raju]

Thank you for your thoughtful feedback, @Arthyron Answering point-wise :

1. The proposal seeks to cover three primary areas :

A. Market Research : Analysing the major channels of remittances and India’s ability to remit via Dash. We seek to draw up a comprehensive research report for the Dash community’s use and understanding of the opportunities & challenges in Indian remittances market and how we can introduce Dash as a viable option. With the size of the Indian remittances market, it is a huge opportunity for us to introduce Indians to Dash and help them save their hard-earned money going waste in bank transaction fees, and it is important to focus our energies on the right segment of this market.

B. Content Development : Using visual media options to create awareness about Dash, we will be developing 2 animation videos in English and Hindi voiceover. We are adding Hindi videos because the massive reach of the language and its resonance with Indians within the country and abroad. The budget allocated covers the scripting, storyboard and development of the videos. Along with the videos, we will be developing ads for Google & social media which will help us attract people to the videos and informational website ( a one-page simple information website and leading to Dash-exchanges in India).

C. Marketing : This part of the budget is allocated to our marketing efforts and divided into two parts - Advertisements and Promotion of our Videos and website (dashremit.com), to create user awareness and introduce them to Dash features. The second part allows us to show people the ease of using Dash by allowing users who sign-up to receive Dash and carry a transaction using the same. Through this incentive, we will also able be able to retarget the same and reach out to them for future initiatives.

2. Coincidentally Dashmaximalist has also commented below yours, so yes we will definitely be reaching out to him. I completely agree with your point here - co-working with people in the Dash ecosystem is the best way to make Dash grow. We aim to synchronise our efforts with him to increase efficiency and reduce overlap.

3. Indian Exchanges have only recently started to integrate with Dash, allowing users to directly buy Dash with Indian Rupees instead of converting Fiat to Bitcoin. WazirX and Buyucoin are two exchanges where users can get Dash with Indian Rupees. Our aim is to explain this process to users through an educational course and walk them through the entire process of sending crypto-remittances before offering them a small giveaway to use dash.

Most exchanges in India lack liquidity, increasing the flow of Dash to India for remittances can also start to address that issue in part, increasing market access for more users. The fact is that there is very little awareness in India about Dash amongst general consumers.

We aim to increase this awareness amongst a small group of first-adopters and explain how they can use Dash to send money to their families without losing money to the likes of Western Union.

We look forward to your inputs and support ! Regards.

 

[Dashmaximalist]

oh wov , thanks for the kind words, looking forward to your plan !!

 

[AlejandroE]

Hello, cheers from Venezuela. I stated before that remittances market is one of the biggest opportunities for Dash due to its features (fast, cheap and secure).

Currently, we are working on a remittances guide called "Send Money Home" for those Venezuelans living overseas (+3 millions) and who want send money to their families in Venezuela. Dash is the perfect solution for this because right now Venezuelans don't have a fast/secure/cheap way to send money to Venezuela, and with this guide we will teach them how to it!! Just in the last year, Venezuelans send more then $2 billions to Venezuela as an OTC remittance, this is big.

We are working in alliance with feedbands who is an expert in ads, and he has some active proposals. He will help us sending traffic to our website once it is live.

I had this idea, if your proposal get funded we can share our remittances guide to you and you can post it on your website and then you would provide information not only for India but internationally aswell! Feel free to contact me.

Best regards

 

[Supreet Raju]

Thank you for writing in, AlejandroE. Your idea is fantastic and we should definitely find ways to collaborate. I hope to reconnect soon with a plan of action. Cheers !

 

[AlejandroE]

Thank you for writing in, AlejandroE. Your idea is fantastic and we should definitely find ways to collaborate. I hope to reconnect soon with a plan of action. Cheers !

Looking forward to talk to you. Good luck!!

 

[QuikWallet]

Thank you for your thoughtful feedback, @Arthyron Answering point-wise :

1. The proposal seeks to cover three primary areas :

A. Market Research : Analysing the major channels of remittances and India’s ability to remit via Dash. We seek to draw up a comprehensive research report for the Dash community’s use and understanding of the opportunities & challenges in Indian remittances market and how we can introduce Dash as a viable option. With the size of the Indian remittances market, it is a huge opportunity for us to introduce Indians to Dash and help them save their hard-earned money going waste in bank transaction fees, and it is important to focus our energies on the right segment of this market.

B. Content Development : Using visual media options to create awareness about Dash, we will be developing 2 animation videos in English and Hindi voiceover. We are adding Hindi videos because the massive reach of the language and its resonance with Indians within the country and abroad. The budget allocated covers the scripting, storyboard and development of the videos. Along with the videos, we will be developing ads for Google & social media which will help us attract people to the videos and informational website ( a one-page simple information website and leading to Dash-exchanges in India).

C. Marketing : This part of the budget is allocated to our marketing efforts and divided into two parts - Advertisements and Promotion of our Videos and website (dashremit.com), to create user awareness and introduce them to Dash features. The second part allows us to show people the ease of using Dash by allowing users who sign-up to receive Dash and carry a transaction using the same. Through this incentive, we will also able be able to retarget the same and reach out to them for future initiatives.

2. Coincidentally Dashmaximalist has also commented below yours, so yes we will definitely be reaching out to him. I completely agree with your point here - co-working with people in the Dash ecosystem is the best way to make Dash grow. We aim to synchronise our efforts with him to increase efficiency and reduce overlap.

3. Indian Exchanges have only recently started to integrate with Dash, allowing users to directly buy Dash with Indian Rupees instead of converting Fiat to Bitcoin. WazirX and Buyucoin are two exchanges where users can get Dash with Indian Rupees. Our aim is to explain this process to users through an educational course and walk them through the entire process of sending crypto-remittances before offering them a small giveaway to use dash.

Most exchanges in India lack liquidity, increasing the flow of Dash to India for remittances can also start to address that issue in part, increasing market access for more users. The fact is that there is very little awareness in India about Dash amongst general consumers.

We aim to increase this awareness amongst a small group of first-adopters and explain how they can use Dash to send money to their families without losing money to the likes of Western Union.

We look forward to your inputs and support ! Regards.

Hi Supreet, I'm the founder of QuikWallet in India - we have a license from the RBI which permits us to do foreign inward remittances, thus allowing conversion to Fiat for Indian users. Happy to explore how we can support this initiative.

 

[Supreet Raju]

Hi Supreet, I'm the founder of QuikWallet in India - we have a license from the RBI which permits us to do foreign inward remittances, thus allowing conversion to Fiat for Indian users. Happy to explore how we can support this initiative.

Hi, I'm sorry I missed this comment here. We would love to talk further with you, let me inbox you by tomorrow or if there's any other way to connect, please inbox. Thanks !

 

[Supreet Raju]

Hi guys ! Thank you for your comments & feedback. It has helped strengthen our proposal. It is now live on Dashcentral : https://www.dashcentral.org/p/Dash-adoption-for-india-remittances

Thanks @Showny M. Azar Raheb @RobbyDash01 @Arthyron @Dashmaximalist @AlejandroE

 

[QuikWallet]

Hi Supreet, just went through your proposal and I believe there are synergies we can explore together. With a simple integration with us, users on your website would be able to send Dash to an Indian mobile number.

Sender user journey -

Enter Indian mobile number and send Dash

Receiver user journey -

1. User receives an SMS with a link
2. User clicks link and creates an account (can choose to download our app too)
3. Account created, and the user will be able to see his Dash
4. User can convert Dash to INR (upto INR 1 lac / month) and transfer to Bank A/c OR Spend the Dash on our merchant network / mobile recharges and bill payments

Essentially, we will have a master address at the back-end where we hold the Dash till the user completes account creation and we assign him an address.

Let me know your thoughts.

Thanks,

Mohit.

 

[RobbyDash01]

Hi Supreet, just went through your proposal and I believe there are synergies we can explore together. With a simple integration with us, users on your website would be able to send Dash to an Indian mobile number.

Sender user journey -

Enter Indian mobile number and send Dash

Receiver user journey -

1. User receives an SMS with a link
2. User clicks link and creates an account (can choose to download our app too)
3. Account created, and the user will be able to see his Dash
4. User can convert Dash to INR (upto INR 1 lac / month) and transfer to Bank A/c OR Spend the Dash on our merchant network / mobile recharges and bill payments

Essentially, we will have a master address at the back-end where we hold the Dash till the user completes account creation and we assign him an address.

Let me know your thoughts.

Thanks,

Mohit.

Thanks QuikWallet.

There you go Supreet. You already have a remittance gateway to FIAT and your proposal hasn't even passed yet.

Wow.

 

[Supreet Raju]

T

Hi Supreet, just went through your proposal and I believe there are synergies we can explore together. With a simple integration with us, users on your website would be able to send Dash to an Indian mobile number.

Sender user journey -

Enter Indian mobile number and send Dash

Receiver user journey -

1. User receives an SMS with a link
2. User clicks link and creates an account (can choose to download our app too)
3. Account created, and the user will be able to see his Dash
4. User can convert Dash to INR (upto INR 1 lac / month) and transfer to Bank A/c OR Spend the Dash on our merchant network / mobile recharges and bill payments

Essentially, we will have a master address at the back-end where we hold the Dash till the user completes account creation and we assign him an address.

Let me know your thoughts.

Thanks,

Mohit.

Thanks so much Mohit. We can definitely collaborate and bring this out in a big way if our proposal passes. Looking forward to connecting further with you if we get approved. Appreciate your support !

 

[Supreet Raju]

Thanks QuikWallet.

There you go Supreet. You already have a remittance gateway to FIAT and your proposal hasn't even passed yet.

Wow.

Thank you @RobbyDash01 for your support. We hope to make it through and get cracking on it : ) Remittances in India is such a massive opportunity for Dash and we really want to make it count.