2022 has witnessed around 300 million crypto users worldwide and India holds the 2nd position on the list. Even though there are around 30-40 million crypto users in India, if anyone wants to pay with cryptocurrency for shopping then they have to first exchange their crypto to INR at any Indian exchange, next they have to transfer the funds to their Indian bank account and then they can make payment online via UPI or Net Banking. This is a long tiring process and burns a lot of money as a commission for multiple transactions. This problem is solved by Bitbatua – India's 1st Cryptocurrency Payment Gateway that anyone can use anywhere, anytime to pay or get paid in cryptocurrency. Analytics Insight has engaged in an exclusive interview with Laxman Singh, Founder & CEO of Bitbatua.

Give a brief overview of the company background, its specialization, and its services.

Back in 2018, the world witnessed the Bitcoin ATH price in Dec 2017 and the progress of cryptocurrency exchanges like Binance. Fast forward to 2022, now there are more than 300 million crypto users worldwide and India holds the 2nd position on the list. Imagine there are around 30-40 million crypto users in India and if anyone wants to pay with cryptocurrency for shopping then they have to first exchange their crypto to INR at any Indian exchange, next they have to transfer the funds to their Indian bank account and then they can make payment online via UPI or Net Banking. This is a long tiring process and burns a lot of money as a commission for multiple transactions. This problem is solved by Bitbatua – India's 1st Cryptocurrency Payment Gateway that anyone can use anywhere, anytime to pay or get paid in cryptocurrency. Any business or individual can integrate Bitbatua to start accepting crypto payments. Bitbatua offers seamless integration of API with businesses and they can also generate unique sharable payment links. Bitbatua Token is used to incentivize the entire ecosystem.

Describe the disruptive innovation achieved by the company

The cryptocurrency market has been expanding at a pace like never before. As per the data available, nearly 10,000 cryptocurrencies are currently being traded in the market with a total market capitalization of more than 2 trillion US dollars. The latest market research predicts that the worldwide bitcoin payment ecosystem would reach the size of 2 billion US dollars by 2025, growing at a double-digit annual rate of 23.4% between 2022 and 2025. Bitcoin isn't just about sending money. It has many features and opens many possibilities that the community is still exploring. Here are some innovative benefits that technology brings and has all the potential to disrupt the finance industry: Control against fraud, Global accessibility, Cost efficiency, Trust and integrity, Resilience and decentralization, Flexible transparency, etc. Bitbatua has built payment solutions on top of these innovative benefits.

Explain how your innovation disrupts the existing market

The existing payment market has major issues such as long settlement time (sometimes cross-border transactions take more than 3-4 business days), high commission, zero transparency, chargebacks, etc. Bitbatua payment solutions driven by Blockchain technology not only solve all of the problems but disrupts the existing solution tech and providers. Businesses using Bitbatua receive payments in real-time, with no chargebacks, and save time and money as well. Most important, businesses accepting payments using Bitbatua will have access to customers globally.

Brief us about the proactive Founder/CEO of the company and his/her contributions

Laxman Singh, Founder & CEO of Bitbatua (Launched in Sep 2021), is a Blockchain Evangelist and one of the early adopters of this technology. He despite being in an Executive position comes from so technical background. He is a graduate in Computer Science and Engineering has worked with dozens of organizations in the past and has helped startups and businesses of all scales to build their products which later on turned into million dollars businesses. His journey in Blockchain Technology was started in 2016 with an experiment of getting paid in Bitcoin for the work he accomplished as an individual freelancer for an overseas customer. After this, he started learning more about this disruptive technology, he had also read the Bitcoin whitepaper to understand the tech behind it. In 2018, He founded a Blockchain Technology company "Lapits Technologies" which has recently been recognized as one of the top 10 trusted blockchain solution providers from India and got featured in the news by "The Hindu", ranked at 5th on the list. Fast forward 4 years, Lapits Technologies is now (the year 2022) a one-stop enterprise blockchain solutions provider with 30-40 team members.

Tell us how the company is contributing to the market and benefiting the clients.

Cryptocurrencies are innovative payment alternatives and a new kind of money that operates on a peer-to-peer technology with no central authority or banks. Bitbatua is helping merchants accept crypto payments worldwide at low processing fees and helping them get paid faster, and securely.

What makes the company innovative? What are the key partnerships and involvements done to drive the innovation?

The technology behind processing payments is Blockchain and that's the real disruptive innovation. Bitbatua has successfully integrated Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Tether USDT coins, along with some key partnerships with exchanges and liquidity pools.

Brief us about the challenges and potential drawbacks of your disruptive innovation

History says that people had always resisted the new technology or innovation, and while there are many reasons for it but their being afraid of the change seemed to be the biggest reason. You take the example of the Internet or Email when these were founded, were opposed by the industry leaders and government officials. A similar situation is happening with Cryptocurrencies. While we believe that it's the future of finance and payments but mass acceptance worldwide is still a challenge. There are no drawbacks to innovation however, it keeps getting better and evolving with time.

How do you see the company/industry in the future ahead?

We've seen Bitcoin hit a new all-time high price in 2021, Ethereum, the second-biggest cryptocurrency, also set its new all-time high. So, 2021 was a big year for cryptocurrency. U.S. government officials and the Biden administration have increasingly expressed interest in new regulations for cryptocurrency, along with several other countries as well. Facebook was renamed Meta which is again based on the concept of Metaverse, some of the largest businesses in the world have shown their interest and have accepted cryptocurrency payments for their products and services, Tesla and Microsoft were a few among them. People's interest in crypto has certainly skyrocketed in early 2022 and so has the Bitbatua. More businesses are diving into the space and more opportunities will be created.