Quote from: Benson Samuel on July 17, 2013, 02:44:04 PM

Quote from: americandesi on July 17, 2013, 02:20:37 PM

Quote from: Benson Samuel on July 16, 2013, 01:44:03 PM

Something cool that I had noticed in most other local communities is that they are ruthless in starting up.

No regulations, etc even matter at this stage apart form money conversion and even that has got several workarounds based on limits, etc.

If our community can get a bit more ruthless and enable/ support/ help any legit business that comes up, I am sure that we can grow way faster in India.

I partly agree with you here Benson. But again, once you start getting the volumes, if your startup is dependent on the banking infrastructure, then yes you have to start thinking about it well in advance.

If your startup can survive independent of the Indian authorities, then you don't even have to bother about the rules and regulations initially.
For instance, taking btc exchange as an example, other countries have some internationally accepted modes of payments like Online Fund Transfer abroad, ACH, WU and MG by which the exchange can flawlessly operate initially until the paperwork is completed. (example : buying and selling through coinbase exchange)

AFAIK, in India even paypal has to comply with RBI regulations and the payments received to that paypal account has to be withdrawn to the local bank at the end of everyday. That makes our situation a tad more diff than the start ups in other countries.

Well, there is nothing out officially as yet mate.. We need to grow merchant acceptance before we can challenge anything.
Without startups and places to link into/ spend money at, there will be no merchant acceptance or growth.
Without that, there is no case to present to anyone. This stems the growth factor.

buysellbitco.in, madovercoins.com, coinmonk.com, indiabitcoin.com, inrbtc.com, etc are really the pillars of our community in India. These are not enough cases to persuade a country/ bank/ company/ individual to adopt.

Any thoughts?

I would like to add a few words on the ruthless part. If you think you have an idea. Go ahead implement and execute it. The license and the registration part comes later. Test your idea, get the feedback...tweak your process. Any country and not just in India, any business attracts attention when you cross a limit. Even in India, unless you cross 40 - 50 lakhs turnover per year...you can run your business without interference from regulatory bodies. It Bitcoin services as a business picks up, one of us from here will get a welcome call from the regulatory body. We as a community can then come together get those things sorted out. We can pool our resources to hire a lawyer or anything which might be needed.

We can freely share our experiences dealing with those agencies, as a group we will add to bitcoin community in India. The first call from any agency is a welcome call because then we know that bitcoin has attracted their attention.

My experience from running INRBTC. So far I have not faced any problems with the Banks. The volume on a per day basis is still below Rs 1 lakh. I am not using any cash channels, all the business is done through NEFT only. Some customers who transact regularly have complained about filling the form regularly even though we already have their banking details.

To overcome that we now have a facility where they can send their bitcoins to a designated address and amount will be deposited in their bank account by end of day. This facility is now being further tweaked. Though I cannot say that it will be payment gateway in a full sense, merchants in India can now get their customers bitcoins sent to their specific address and the amount will be deposited in their bank accounts daily.

My experience so far is ...the volumes are low....test your ideas...if it not fully automated...make a semi automated setup...but the get service out. the true validator of your business are the customers not the regulatory agencies.