Hi everybody, welcome to Living on Blockchain. Today we’ll be interviewing Aachal. She’s a chartered accountant.
She runs a consultancy firm which provides umbrella services to crypto projects and I think this could run be a really good one. It’s very interesting. Let’s deep dive right in.
Okay, hi Aachal. How are you doing today? Hi Tarusha, I’m very well. How are you? I’m good.
Thank you so much for taking out the time to talk to us. I’m really excited for this particular episode because you will give us all the deets on taxation and policy and whatnot. Yeah, hopefully I’m able to help.
I’m sure you’ll do a really good job. So tell us a little about yourself. Tell us how you got involved in this space, a little about your background.
So Tarusha, in the blockchain space I’ve been working and learning about it since. So blockchain is something that you continuously learn because things are evolving every day. So I’ve been learning and working in the field for over three years now.
So my introduction into blockchain and crypto was because of Bitcoin, which I utilized for making a payment to some island-based company. So it was a MLM scheme where we also lost some money. But because when I started, I mean using Bitcoin blockchain, then I started to realize convenience and the benefit that blockchain brings in, at least in the inter-country transactions when you’re sending funds overseas.
So I have an ICICI bank account. I have been sending money overseas through ICICI bank, but when I used Bitcoin, I realized the speed and the cost of using blockchain was, I mean, immensely lower. And the cost is lower and the speed is higher.
So then I started learning about various blockchains. I also explored a lot of blockchains. I started working with projects in India and overseas in the space.
So that is how I’ve been working in the space. My background is that I’m a over 11 years now. So yeah, so I worked with Infosys for a long time as a consultant and I also have a consulting firm, which is Dior Consulting Group.
So basically in Dior, we have all the professionals like chartered accountants, companies, secretaries, and lawyers, and we provide solutions for most, we work with a lot of startups and most of the startups are in the emerging technologies and blockchain seems to be one of them, but more because I’m more interested in the space. So we have more, probably more clients and more experience in the field. Right.
Okay. So what kind of consultancy do you give to these startups? So for the startups, we basically provide, from the strategy point of view, from starting, when a person starts a business, they have a lot of questions, a lot of ambiguities on even on where the company should be or company or whatever kind of organization they want to set up, that should be based on for blockchain startups. If they’re into public blockchain space, they may not find India very suitable because cryptocurrencies are not defined in India.
Yeah. So probably that means if they want to use cryptocurrencies, we always suggest that they should have a setup in other countries where the crypto regulations are there and where they can be, I mean, they’re able to open proper bank accounts and do their business properly. For private blockchain startups, we normally suggest that India is a fairly decent space to be and government is also.
So that is in the blockchain space. Otherwise also, so we handle from company incorporation to handling the whole finance, accounting, legal, structural, and strategic consulting. We provide all these kinds of support to the startups.
Wow. Brilliant. So that’s kind of the whole gamut, you know, you really help out startups and do all the handholding.
If there’s somebody is venturing into the space, they should really contact you. Yes. Yes.
I mean, the thing is that every startup has some core ability and they should focus on that. Exactly. For a startup, it is very, very difficult to grow the business itself.
And if you go to any particular professional, if you go to a lawyer, I mean, you know, the kind of fees that you have to pay to a lawyer, then you go to a CA and then you go to a company secretary for various requirements. So we have brought all those professionals under one umbrella. And so that once you come to us, you get all the services under one umbrella.
Plus our focus, our main USP is that since we have been from me, my partners, they have been from big four or from big MNCs. So our focus is on providing very personalized service. So personalized and good quality service.
So in the blockchain space, you must be aware and blockchain or any other emerging technology, the regulations are normally not very clear. They’re very dynamic. They keep on changing and you keep on getting new notifications every few months.
There are new bills being presented and the environment is not certain. Like for, if you say about official intelligence, many new things are coming and some countries might be more receptive to it. Some might not be.
Drone up just last year. For such kind of stuff, it’s very unlikely that you’ll get one firm who will be able to help you with everything. That is our focus.
And we try to provide a personalized service. We plan everything. So we don’t keep a standard quotation.
We normally see what the startup requires. All right. Okay.
Sounds wonderful. So this is actually really nice because this is a problem that we face ourselves that you have to sort of approach a lot of bodies and you have to approach a lot of service providers to actually get a very small things done and very nicely put that startups cannot really, because startups are usually resource, they have less resources at hand. They cannot really spread themselves so thin and getting all the services in one place would definitely help them sort of kickstart their growth.
So this is brilliant. I think very relevant. So you work with Infosys.
Are you still working with them in any capacity? Yes, I’m still a consultant with Infosys. So I really love technology because from the time I, though I’m a finance professional, but I have been working in technologies since so long as an ERP consultant, as a banking consultant. So that really helps to be associated with organizations like Infosys because then you continuously know what is new in the field of technology.
Okay. Right. Yeah.
So is there any, speaking of new, so is there any project around blockchain that Infosys perhaps is working on that you can tell us about? So for Infosys, I should not be the one answering this question. I should not be the right person to contact for that. Okay.
No. So my question was basically to gain an insight, whether these, you know, the very big enterprises are, how are they approaching blockchain? So perhaps this would be a better question. Yes.
So if you ask me, I have been following all the big organizations and how they are moving in the blockchain space. So what I see is that organizations specifically in India are focusing on the enterprise blockchain space more. They are more focusing on Hyperledger, on implementations based on Hyperledger, on R3coder, and some knowledge about some implementations in Ethereum space as well.
But most of them are in the enterprise blockchain space like in Hyperledger. I’ve seen a lot more focus on Hyperledger and R3coder as far as these bigger organizations go. But you can see that each of these organizations are bigger organizations like Infosys, TCS, or Wipro, even IBM.
So they are all developing their own enterprise blockchain solutions on a regular basis. And they’re taking up multiple projects, not just Infosys, it’s every organization is actually taking up multiple projects in the space. World over, if you see globally, globally, every big organization, so I just read one of the reports by one of the big fours, where they’ve mentioned that 84% of the bigger organizations of Fortune 500 organizations are doing some kind of POC in the space of blockchain.
So 84% is a big number. Right, absolutely. Okay, so this is wonderful.
It’s good for mass adoption, I think, even though most of these enterprises, they’re creating permission chains, permission blockchains or DLTs. But nevertheless, I think this can help in adoption of this technology, because it can do so much good. Yes, yes, for sure.
If you see about, I mean, for permission blockchain space, every other organization is trying to understand at some point, how they can adopt it. Because there is at least some value there. When the trust layer is being handled by the smart contracts, it really helps a lot.
But in the public blockchain space, if you ask me, countries like Dubai, or Singapore, they’re really doing well. Yeah, they’re actually adopted the public blockchains as well. India has not yet, I don’t see many things happening in Indian government space where they’re adopting public blockchain, but there certainly is an adoption in public blockchain space from the developer side, for sure.
And from government side, it is, I see that Dubai is far ahead as compared to other countries. Dubai is there, then there is France, which is not very well known. France is doing very well in the regulatory framework side, when you ask me.
Okay, okay. So which, you know, now talking about international waters, so which country do you, you know, you’ve already mentioned Dubai and France, they’re doing very well. So which country would you recommend to perhaps startups who are looking to set up, you know, a startup in the crypto or the blockchain space? So I normally when some startup comes in the space of blockchain, we ask them if they are going to use cryptocurrency or not.
That’s the first question, right? Because if they have not yet registered a company, and they’re just thinking, hello. Actually, your voice is broken off. Have you just got overseas and doing it? Okay, so I can do your answer.
You’d have to start from the beginning for this particular question, because your voice completely broke off. I can’t hear you again. Is your internet okay? Because I’m getting full connectivity.
Your voice has started breaking a lot, perhaps log out and log in again. Let’s try to join in again. Because yeah.
Okay, can you hear me? Hi. Yeah, I can hear you. Okay, okay.
So your voice completely broke off. So, you know, with that same question, just please start your answer again. Tarsha? Yes.
Can you hear me? I’m able to hear you now. So you were saying something. Yes, I was saying that, you know, because this particular answer just started from the beginning because your voice broke off.
So for the last question itself. Okay, okay. So I was saying that whenever a startup comes to us, who is working in the space of blockchain, the first question is whether they’re going to utilize cryptocurrency in any sense in business or not.
If cryptocurrency is there, and their team is in India or they’re Indian founders, they can have their registrations and everything done in India. It’s fine. I mean, you don’t have to go overseas if it’s not required to.
But if you are in the space of public blockchain and you are going to use cryptocurrency, then in that case, we suggest that. Hello. Hello.
Yeah, I’m here. Yeah. So then in that case, we suggest that they can set up their organization in countries like Singapore or France.
So there are countries like India and Malta, Malta also are doing very well. But comparatively, if you see the regulatory framework, it’s more conducive in Estonia and Malta. But it is more properly regulated and more respected in countries like Singapore, Dubai or France.
Regulations are very clear in these countries. Even the US is bringing new regulations and they are also becoming quite conducive. But the US has some walls.
Right. Yes, it does.