Our guest this week is BitBnS founder and CEO Gaurav Dahake. Bitbns is now the largest Bitcoin exchange in India by volume and their team has rolled out a number of other products focused on onboarding new users into Bitcoin. Gaurav first founded successful commerce plugin Buyhatke out of university and knows what it takes to grow in the Indian market, so this is full of learnings on the market in India.

We dive into sentiment around Bitcoin generally, population segments in India that Gaurav believes are natural adopters and how Bitbns is expanding its business to pull those segments into Bitcoin. We clear up the current regulatory situation and the development of that situation over the past three years that led to BitBnS, which Gaurav founded less than three years ago.

We also get an inside perspective on what it takes to build a successful business in India from someone who has now built two as well as a perspective on the momentum of the India FinTech scene and its key drivers.

I learned a ton here and hope you’ll enjoy it.

Topics:

• Background in India, initial entrepreneurship
• Founding Buyhatke, finding Bitcoin in 2012 and the market in India at the time
• Founding Bitbns in 2017, the initial product
• The regulatory environment in India in 2017 that led to a shakeup of the competitive landscape, how Bitbns prospered
• Why India is a ripe market, exchange adjacent products targeting new Bitcoin users (https://bitdroplet.com)
• Overview of regulatory bodies and current state
• India market insights
• Fintech momentum in India and key drivers

Links:

• Gaurav on Twitter @gauravdahake
• BitBnS on Twitter @bitbns
• Buyhatke on Twitter @BuyHatke