Dash for India

Q

QuikWallet

New member
Hello Dash Community.

I'd like to introduce myself, I'm Mohit Lalvani, the Co-Founder & CEO of LivQuik, an India-based payments technology company.

LivQuik owns and operates the Consumer App - QuikWallet. We've recently added wallet capabilities for BTC, BCH and ETH to our consumer App and we would love to work with the Dash community.

Here's a brief about our journey -

We started our journey as a B2C company - we launched a consumer facing mobile wallet app and found the going tough competing with the kind of capital at play (PayTM has raised over $3bn to date from Alibaba/Softbank). We'd built some really neat solutions and decided to take a B2B2C approach instead. We integrated our solutions into two large mobile banking apps in India (eliminated customer acquisition cost). The bank's customers could now make payments on our 4000+ merchant network directly from their bank app. On the merchant acquiring side, we're working with Edenred India (Ticket) for whom we white-labeled our merchant acceptance platform. Ticket issues tax-free meal vouchers to large corporations for onward issuance to their employees. Ticket will be acquiring close to 40k merchants on our platform using our technology solutions.

In 2016, we received a license from the Reserve Bank of India to operate a semi-closed payment system. Now, coming to the crypto world - We're resurrecting our consumer app and adding the ability to Buy/Sell/Spend popular cryptocurrencies (BCH, LTC, ETH, DASH) enabling consumers to pay at our 4000+ merchant network which will organically grow to 40k+ since Ticket Restaurant will be acquiring merchants (primarily grocery stores and eateries). Very recently, the RBI has permitted inter-operability with open payment systems like NEFT, Visa, MasterCard, RuPay, UPI & Bharat (India) QR. This allows us to issue cards to consumers linked to their wallets and operating as principal members on these interoperable networks. Even in a possible future event that Visa/MasterCard and bank-backed networks decide to shut access to crypto wallets like us, we have our own network because of our tie-up with Ticket Restaurant.

There are over 2mn+ merchants already accepting payments using the Bharat (India) QR code standard.

Recently, WhatsApp has integrated UPI so if you are in India you can simply WhatsApp money directly from within the App to a contact in your phonebook.

From a Proposal / Budget standpoint, as a company, we need to raise about US$ 7mn and are in active conversations with various venture capitalists and are also contemplating an ICO. I'd love to share our presentation and some links where you can learn about what's happening in payments in India, unfortunately the forum is not letting me attach a file or any links.

Cheers!
 
Exciting stuff! Have you considered giving dash preferential treatment in exchange for funding? For instance, some amount of time of Dash exclusivity, or dash receiving lower fees than the other currencies to encourage people to use Dash? Do you plan on putting up a full pre-proposal where we can see more details?
 
Yes, for now I'm trying to gather some initial feedback before building out a full fledged proposal! Ideally I wanted to post a few links which explains some of the things I'm talking about to ensure the community understands what we're trying to do and the possible challenges we face. This is my second post, so after the third one, I'll put up our presentation and then work towards building a proposal. I saw the "8 steps to a succesful proposal" sticky thread after my first post.
 
Well, I'll just give you my opinion from what I have read so far. If this can really give us access to 40K Merchants then this will be amazing. What are your current expectations of how many users you can acquire?

And as Name3 said if you want funding from us you will need to provide some kind of preferential treatment to dash. Preferably an exclusivity period.

You said you need $7million even if the proposal is worth that much currently that would put serious strain on the budget. So getting some other Investors might be a necessity unless the Dash price and thus the available budget go up significantly.

Also for a proposal of this magnitude make sure to take enough time to figure out the details before submitting a real proposal.
 
TheSingleton said:
What are your current expectations of how many users you can acquire?
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User acquisition will require a marketing budget. In India, the leading players have spent billions of $ on doling out cashbacks and discounts to consumers and merchants alike.

TheSingleton said:
If this can really give us access to 40K Merchants then this will be amazing.
Click to expand...

Also, we can provide access to not just 40k merchants but 5 mn+ merchants...

Our license from the Reserve Bank of India will soon permit us to be -

1. An issuer on card payment networks like Visa & MasterCard (POS terminal penetration has doubled from 1.5 mn to 3 mn in just over two years since demonetization)
2. An issuer on the merchant mobile payments network "Bharat (India) QR" - 2 mn+ merchants who can't afford POS terminals, accept payments through QR codes in India. Demonetization gave a huge fillip to digital adoption.
3. Member of the Unified Payments Interface - This is an address based P2P payment system (for eg. mike@somebank) by the National Payments Corporation of India and adopted by most of the banks in India. WhatsApp recently launched payments in India on the UPI rails, so I can send money to anyone on WhatsApp bank-to-bank without ever leaving the app.

TheSingleton said:
You said you need $7million even if the proposal is worth that much currently that would put serious strain on the budget. So getting some other Investors might be a necessity unless the Dash price and thus the available budget go up significantly.

Also for a proposal of this magnitude make sure to take enough time to figure out the details before submitting a real proposal.
Click to expand...

Why we need $7 mn? - As per the new guidelines by the RBI, we need to increase our paid-up capital to ~$4 mn and have about ~$1 mn in reserves at all times by 31st March, 2020. Yes, we are actively seeking investors and are also contemplating an ICO but we'll need to raise some capital to even finance the ICO and could be done with a smaller budget. Further, to conduct an ICO; being a regulated company, we will need to reverse merge our Indian entity into an entity based in an ICO conducive jurisdiction. And yes, we are trying to figure out all the details and such discussions and feedback help us make progress :)

We are essentially like a Bank (no cash withdrawals allowed). This license also permits us to undertake foreign inward remittances.

I'm hoping after this reply I can start posting links :)
 
This is really exciting stuff and I think that everyone in the Dash community would be very excited for your proposal. You should probably contact Bradley Zastrow (email: [email protected]) at Dash Core to facilitate escrow. As long as you can offer dash some period of exclusivity or some incentive close to it in your proposal I feel like this would almost certainly pass through.
 
Name3 said:
This is really exciting stuff and I think that everyone in the Dash community would be very excited for your proposal. You should probably contact Bradley Zastrow (email: [email protected]) at Dash Core to facilitate escrow. As long as you can offer dash some period of exclusivity or some incentive close to it in your proposal I feel like this would almost certainly pass through.
Click to expand...

Thank you, I'll certainly reach out :)
 
This is exciting stuff. But as far as my knowledge goes, cryptocurrencies are not a legal tender in India. Yes, exchanges do exist, but at their own risk. But business transactions cannot be carried out at this point in time. I would love to hear more about this, as you would have made your research on this issue.
 
eximius said:
This is exciting stuff. But as far as my knowledge goes, cryptocurrencies are not a legal tender in India. Yes, exchanges do exist, but at their own risk. But business transactions cannot be carried out at this point in time. I would love to hear more about this, as you would have made your research on this issue.
Click to expand...

We already have a legal opinion. When the user initiates the transaction, a disclaimer will be provided - "As crypto assets aren't considered legal tender, please note that you are actually selling your asset at the spot rate provided by us and the merchant will receive payment in Indian Rupees"
 
Congratulations for the work of your company. The Fintechs are definitely wonderful. I would like to see a roadmap of your plan and know your short and long term goals in detail. I will follow your project closely. Greetings and success.
 
Yes, to echo the suggestions of others here, having access to millions of merchants is fantastic, but in particular, what advantages will you provide to the Dash network over others? If we're going to fund this integration, it has to be worth our while as well. In the past, as previously mentioned, others have offered us some measure of exclusivity or discounts for paying with Dash or those sorts of advantages. Help us to make this a mutually beneficial arrangement and your chances of being funded increase dramatically.
 
Asking for this kind of money without any track record with the network is the surest way to have a proposal turned down.

Also, supporting icos or your investment rounds doesnt do anything for the dash network.

I would like to see this start small before asking for larger sums..
 
CarlosTrujillo said:
Congratulations for the work of your company. The Fintechs are definitely wonderful. I would like to see a roadmap of your plan and know your short and long term goals in detail. I will follow your project closely. Greetings and success.
Click to expand...

Thank you :) Yes, in a few days we will publish a full-fledged roadmap

Arthyron said:
Yes, to echo the suggestions of others here, having access to millions of merchants is fantastic, but in particular, what advantages will you provide to the Dash network over others? If we're going to fund this integration, it has to be worth our while as well. In the past, as previously mentioned, others have offered us some measure of exclusivity or discounts for paying with Dash or those sorts of advantages. Help us to make this a mutually beneficial arrangement and your chances of being funded increase dramatically.
Click to expand...

We're discussing this internally prior to putting out a full proposal

Argon31 said:
Asking for this kind of money without any track record with the network is the surest way to have a proposal turned down.

Also, supporting icos or your investment rounds doesn't do anything for the dash network.

I would like to see this start small before asking for larger sums..
Click to expand...

Dash support is coming to QuikWallet in the next 2-3 weeks. We're launching with a few use cases -

1. Send / Receive
2. Pay at 4500+ merchants (on our closed network)
3. Mobile / Satellite TV Air Time Top-ups and Utility Bill Payments
4. Gift Cards - over 50+ large format online and offline retailers

We're not looking to have the money in our account tomorrow. We want to engage with the community, we mean business. As a company we've already raised $2.5mn over thee investment rounds so we have runway for the next few months while we talk to VC's and explore other avenues of raising capital. Unfortunately, the amount required is quite large because of the new regulations. They open up inter-operability but require significant investments to be made.
 
Last edited:
QuikWallet said:
Thank you :) Yes, in a few days we will publish a full-fledged roadmap



We're discussing this internally prior to putting out a full proposal



Dash support is coming to QuikWallet in the next 2-3 weeks. We're launching with a few use cases -

1. Send / Receive
2. Pay at 4500+ merchants (on our closed network)
3. Mobile / Satellite TV Air Time Top-ups and Utility Bill Payments
4. Gift Cards - over 50+ large format online and offline retailers

We're not looking to have the money in our account tomorrow. We want to engage with the community, we mean business. As a company we've already raised $2.5mn over thee investment rounds so we have runway for the next few months while we talk to VC's and explore other avenues of raising capital. Unfortunately, the amount required is quite large because of the new regulations. They open up inter-operability but require significant investments to be made.
Click to expand...

Great!! I'll be waiting.
 
Hello, thanks for sharing us your company and your ideas to add Dash in your systema. We know the importance of bringing as much merchant we can and if you can add those merchant you are saying to Dash, it would be something really big. I quote the previous comment (what is in exchange for Dash if you get funded? This has to be a win-win alliance).

It would be great if you can provide a Detailed costs breakdown about how you are going to spend the funds and also a roadmap with milestones.

Looking forward to your response. Best regards!
 
Dash support for QuikWallet is here for our beta users :)
 

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@QuikWallet -- Looks great, and the fact that you've secured some of your own funding for the project also bodes well for your proposal. It might be a good idea to visit http://www.dashcentral.org and look at some of the previous, successfully funded proposals to gauge what kind of funding you might able to secure. We're looking more and more toward funding successful integration projects like this, so I hope we're able to come to a mutually favorable, mutually beneficial arrangement.
 
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