[00:00:00] Luke: From privacy concerns to limitless potential, AI is rapidly impacting our evolving society. In this new season of the Brave Technologist podcast, we’re demystifying artificial intelligence, challenging the status quo, and empowering everyday people to embrace the digital revolution. I’m your host, Luke Malks, VP of Business Operations at Brave Software, makers of the privacy respecting Brave browser and search engine, now powering AI with the Brave Search API.

[00:00:28] You’re listening to a new episode of the Brave Technologist. This one features Rahul, who is the CEO of ZebPay, the largest Bitcoin exchange in India. He’s someone who strongly believes that blockchain technology can transform the world and has been investing in digital assets since 2011. He’s a successful serial entrepreneur and investor.

[00:00:46] Prior to ZebPay, Rahul co founded Freedom Health, the largest private health insurance company in America, until acquired by Anthem in 2018. In this episode, we discussed India’s relationship with gold and its history with technology adoption, the future of bots in financial [00:01:00] engineering, Working with regulators in India, how they’re managing risk as a custodian, how centralized finance and decentralized finance can work together and advice for new entrepreneurs getting into this space.

[00:01:10] Now for this week’s episode of the brave technologist. Welcome to the brave technologist podcast. How are you doing today? Awesome,

[00:01:19] Rahul: man.

[00:01:20] Luke: Thanks, Luke. Thanks for having me. Yeah, yeah. Thanks for coming on. I’ve been looking forward to it. Give us a little bit of background on your journey into the crypto space.

[00:01:27] Your role is kind of like investing also being one of these early adopters in the crypto space and kind of like on the forefront of it.

[00:01:34] Rahul: I think of myself as like an investor entrepreneur. I love both kind of started as an entrepreneur, but then also fell in love with investing. And now I, you know, do a little both and how I end up doing what I’m doing right now is I’m, I basically wear two hats.

[00:01:49] I’m like the, basically the CIO for Aon Capital. Which is our family office. And then I’m also the CEO of Zedpay. And Zedpay is basically the, the largest Bitcoin exchange in India. I [00:02:00] guess because of number one, being the investor Aon, that’s how I got into running Zedpay. And back on your question of like, you know, how I ended up here is that being a huge fan of, I’d say Warren Buffett, who’s a, who’s funny.

[00:02:12] Cause he kind of doesn’t like crypto. Yeah. I know he’s a big value investor and on the path of me studying what Warren does, became a big value investor. And then in 2011, I stumbled upon the Bitcoin white paper and was just immediately. Like him thought it was a Ponzi scheme and thought this is either the best idea or the worst idea in the world.

[00:02:34] After I kind of understood it, it took me a while. I’m talking about two years to really, really understand it. By 2012 and 2013, I was convinced it was the best idea in the world. When I did that, I convinced the family, our family, Office to start investing heavily in the space over the past caught north of 10 years have been investing in Bitcoin, Ethereum, blockchain, during a lot of zigs and zags, the marketplace have invested in companies, tokens, protocols, our famous office investors in Brave, investors in [00:03:00] ZPay, investors in Coinbase, a ton of different companies, and we look at it as a journey of trying to apply Warren Buffett’s Let’s say value investing framework into crypto.

[00:03:11] And so I wear two hats and very much like Warren, I run, my day job is running a Bitcoin exchange in India. And then my, you know, nighttime here job is just trying to try to really learn how to, how to, how all these protocols work and how people can use them as an, as investment assets.

[00:03:25] Luke: It’s really interesting.

[00:03:26] I mean, like you’ve got both this kind of like global look at crypto and you’re, you’re involved in a lot of these companies that may be well known in the U. S., but also you’re approaching us such a huge market of India, right? Like, what are some of the differences in crypto adoption that you see in India and then also in operating an exchange in India compared to like challenges you might see elsewhere?

[00:03:47] Are the regional differences like Significant when you go from, you know, like a place like India to like the U S or, for example.

[00:03:54] Rahul: And let me get my background too. So I’m Indian origin. I was born and raised here in the U S, but I was [00:04:00] 21. I’m now 46, like 25 years ago, I moved to India, moved back into the motherland and I started a company there.

[00:04:06] It was wild back in like 1999, India was. It’s nowhere near as massive or growing like it was today. And because of that knowledge, I lived there for about three or four years, fell in love with the country, fell in love with like with all of the amazing stuff happening there and how that can expect it.

[00:04:23] Like, you know, where, where Zepi is now and how the regulations are different in India versus us. Is it India is the largest democracy in the world, right? It’s just like America, but it’s just a lot younger. So it’s roughly caught, you know, 75 years. In fact, I think they just recently celebrated their 75th anniversary.

[00:04:40] Just imagine America in like 1776. And so caught 50 years later, 1850 or something like that. There’s still a lot of things that it’s figuring out. And I’d say India is the exact same way, even though it’s a large, vibrant democracy, it’s almost like Europe is so many different people and cultures and things like that.

[00:04:56] It works, but it’s messy. And during this path [00:05:00] of democracy. A lot of regulators weren’t really sure how Bitcoin fit. So Zeppe was basically the first and largest and biggest Bitcoin exchange. It started, the seeds of Zeppe started in 2012, even before Coinbase was founded.

[00:05:11] Luke: Wow.

[00:05:11] Rahul: In 2014 is when, when actual, it was incorporated as Zeppe.

[00:05:15] There’s a predecessor exchange, which, which kind of morphed into this. So we’re celebrating our 10 year anniversary now. And during those 10 years, like Bitcoin started at a hundred dollars. Right , and now it’s worth is, you know, $62,000. And so during those ups and downs, a lot of that was, let’s say, the market and the hype and the cycles.

[00:05:33] But a lot of, a lot of ups and downs were created by almost regulatory uncertainty.

[00:05:37] Luke: Mm-Hmm. ,

[00:05:38] Rahul: our family got involved because in 2017 there’s a kind of a, a banking ban by the RB. We came in as a minority investor and then, and then I eventually became CEO in 2019, end of 2019, 2020. And luckily in 2020, the banking ban was overturned by the Supreme court.

[00:05:55] And now basically Bitcoin is very legal in India. You can buy and sell it, [00:06:00] but it’s kind of taxed. A little unfavorably is I’d say it’s taxed as like a gambling type product. And you and I both know, you know, people can speculate, but the core of Bitcoin is not that the core Bitcoin is, is really, I’d say a brand new asset class.

[00:06:15] And what that pays kind of goal is really educating and teaching people about how to use these really amazing digital assets in India called virtual digital assets, these VDAs or blockchain, you know, crypto assets. Let’s go into it. And a great narrative is break. So we’re really trying to tell the Indian consumers, these are brand new, cool ideas.

[00:06:31] And as India is pretty much the largest country in the world that has developers, software developers, right. And we’re trying to figure out how to educate them into that. This is really the next generation of technology.

[00:06:43] Luke: Are there like applications that blockchain technology brings to India that are going to be massively disruptive and beneficial that people in the West might not be considering or use cases that are like specific to India that you really want to tackle like in your position?

[00:06:58] Rahul: I mean, there’s a ton of stuff. [00:07:00] Here’s my take on this. Ready? Is it, is that a, you know, you’re in the U S I grew up in America. America has got a great financial sector, right? It works pretty well. It’s not perfect, but, but you know, credit cards work and Apple pay works and our banking system is pretty safe.

[00:07:12] Inflation is reasonably controlled India. It’s getting better now, but a long time ago, there’d be a lot of booms and busts. Inflation was kind of rampant and high. There’s a lot of illiteracy, like, you know, luckily it’s getting better now, but, but. You know, X percent of people have banks, which was less than 50%.

[00:07:26] Now it’s growing.

[00:07:27] Luke: Wow.

[00:07:28] Rahul: But what’s happened is over the past 10 years has been a large digitization. There’s actually a thing called the, and a dark card is almost like a, like a, a social security number. And so a lot of. About India’s impressive growth has been able to basically digitize, you know, let’s say people’s lives.

[00:07:44] And the second thing that’s happened is the smartphone has, has drastically improved people’s lives. There’s a huge amount of smartphone penetration. And in fact, probably maybe second to China, but it’ll eventually surpass China because India is now the most populous country in the world.

[00:07:58] Luke: Right.

[00:07:58] Rahul: Yeah. [00:08:00] And so what I see happening is over time, a lot of things like identity access to ownership records, um, Verification of school records, things like that.

[00:08:12] They’re going to be on a blockchain, but like India eventually needs to, then just cause you have a blockchain version of those things, they need to be, let’s say, allowed by rule of law. I see that happening. It’s going to take a time, probably over the next 10 to 20 years. And the best way I can explain that would be.

[00:08:27] For the user, I’m actually an attorney, right? So I’m a lawyer. And that’s been a great benefit as being a CEO of an exchange is that I see that over the next 10, 20 years, laws will eventually okay, a blockchain. It’s a verification of an asset. Right? So right now, let’s say the title for your, house.

[00:08:47] It’s really only really verified if it’s owned by, let’s say some sort of database record that’s in the owned by a government, you know, a city hall or something, right? Eventually will be some sort of law where, listen, the owner of this [00:09:00] NFT can do this. And so it’s not just a technological improvement.

[00:09:03] It’s going to be adoption by various participants. And the cool thing is because India is a democracy, I think, and it’s very affordable democracy. I mean, there’s a lot of educated people who run software. It’s going to happen. And so I’m waiting for like for over the next. You know, a few decades for this to improve.

[00:09:17] Luke: Yeah. And are you seeing good, like a good adoption curve in India? Like with, I mean, I, like I’m seeing just from like anecdotally kind of looking at, you know, some of the times of India and other publications that will have like crypto, they had crypto sections earlier than other regions, right? Like, and, and, you know, there’s some areas of the world that are, you know, whether it’s various reasons, they’re less warm and welcome to it.

[00:09:36] It seems like India though, has been pretty forward thinking with it, at least in that grassroots level, like where you have tech adopters, Is that fair? Like, are you, is that what you guys are seeing too?

[00:09:46] Rahul: Two things are happening. One really cool thing about India that a lot of listeners might know is that India has a millennia long love affair with gold, right?

[00:09:53] Like Indians love gold, whether in jewelry, a store of value. And if you go look at, you know, the gold council, you’re going to see a [00:10:00] tremendous amount of demand from India. It’s the number one demand in the world. As you know, Bitcoin’s narrative is digital gold. Which is makes easy sense for people who are of Indian origin.

[00:10:09] So not only do they understand software, they understand, Oh, wow. A digital version of gold is, is something that they would appreciate. And so without a doubt, that’s. Definitely part of the narrative. And the second thing I’d say is that Indians, cause they do also understand software and tech, their early adopters of technology, whether it’s like at the very, very forefront, not obviously at the mass market, go look at the, the CEOs, the largest companies in the world, whether it’s Adela or Sundar Pichai.

[00:10:35] It’s like, it’s not surprising to the Indian origin software engineers and architects are leading some of the largest. Big tech companies in the world. It’s kind of, it’s a mind blowing, right? You know why? Because they’re amazing at software. They’re amazing at technology and growth. These very forward looking, forward thinking Indian origin coders, engineers lot like Brendan, right?

[00:10:53] These really technologists, they see the value in these assets and they’re helping really bring up the demand. So [00:11:00] on our side, Zeppe, if you go look, I’ve seen a couple of different servers on this. I’ve seen some surveys. I don’t know if it’s, if it’s verified or true that the highest ownership of crypto assets outside of America is India, right?

[00:11:09] And I’ve seen a couple of places where it’s saying India is number one. I don’t know the exact number. It’d be very interesting to see. But like, I do know that there’s, Zepi itself has 10 million customers, basically, almost 10 million to say people who are interested in this. We’ve onboarded over 6 million KYC verified customers.

[00:11:22] Luke: Wow. Huge. You look in a place where you’ve got that much population density, right? Even a small percentage of adoption is a massive number, right? Like, and especially if it’s just tech forward and early adopting and all of that. I mean, you’ve got portfolio companies you’re looking at, a lot of them with a crypto focus.

[00:11:37] Obviously AI has just been huge, huge hype and drive around that. Like, how are you seeing that crossover into like the portfolio companies that you have now? Are you seeing them adopting AI and? Some way like to kind of get on that hype. And are you guys also looking at AI as the new sector of companies to invest in right now?

[00:11:56] Like and what’s your take generally on what you see with the AI space?

[00:11:59] Rahul: Yeah, so [00:12:00] big fan of, well first of all, what Brave is doing, I love the browser and the search and, and Leo, so, so awesome. I’m also a little bit of like a sci-fi nerd and so grew up watching like, you know, star Trek, the Next Generation and, data and, and like it’s so cool seeing.

[00:12:14] This stuff coming out in the past several years where we’re almost getting like this inflection point. Our family is very, very interested in stuff. In fact, it’s very clear to me that post this kind of big bump from open AI and chat GPT is that I think the biggest users of blockchain assets, the biggest users of say, digital assets and blockchains are going to be AI agents.

[00:12:33] And I think the intersection of let’s say AI with blockchain and the other big It’s the area our family’s been focused on is healthcare is going to be a tremendous amount of value add to the economy. So, you know, healthcare is an enormous part of the economy. And so once you add in the, especially the first two, but even the third, it’s the AI and blockchain, there’s going to be so much improvement in productivity and lifespan and things like that.

[00:12:56] So what I’m seeing, I’d say now that’s a little bit further out because it’s just imagine, [00:13:00] you know, talking to a, doctor, you know, data like, you know, from, from Star Trek, you know, Is it that doctor would know amazing things about you could keep data private and just do amazing, amazing stuff, right? But I think what happens probably in my, personal opinion on where there’s a lot of stuff immediate, is it a lot of really cool AI agents and bots are going to be doing called financial type engineering, financial bots that.

[00:13:21] And so what they’ll probably be doing is using. Really good machine learning technology to make better decisions. And you’re seeing this a little bit happen with, let’s say, certain like standards of tax on blockchains and software is using stuff to get better pricing of things. And if you’re not careful, then basically if you don’t have protections in place, AI agents that are out there are going to come out and they’re not really quote unquote, take your money, but they’re going to make sure you pay the most, right?

[00:13:47] You should have some good guys on your side. That’s really why I think even brave wallets over the longer run is you have kind of It’s a bodyguards and bouncers that protect you to make sure that no one else is chipping you off. And so what I kind of see happening to say within the blockchain [00:14:00] AI space, is it so many attack vectors that happen?

[00:14:03] If you can, you connect to a web three website, is it, I’m hoping that like, it’s almost like a bodyguard. Hey, Rahul, before you connect to the site. Here’s some people that are trying to attack you. And I prevented three or four of them, or before you make this transaction, you should adjust your slippage amount, because if you make it 1 percent instead of 5%, you’re going to save a thousand dollars in fees or something like that.

[00:14:24] And these are all really cool things, which a piece of software can go out. It can basically even recommend gas fees and which blockchain we’re going to buy the asset, the cheapest things like that.

[00:14:32] Luke: Yeah. It makes a lot of sense.

[00:14:33] Rahul: Yeah. And as he said, because we’re a central exchange, what we are kind of be doing is.

[00:14:38] It’ll help us out, but also help out like as our users go to decks with educating them on how, how do you use AI to improve their lives?

[00:14:45] Luke: And I can imagine too, like if you have, it’s almost like a necessarily financial advisor, but like if you have a customer, it might be like DCA, like a dollar cost averaging or trying to automate how they’re investing.

[00:14:57] Hey, I could probably help out with, with some of that too, [00:15:00] and getting in some of their goals met and things like that, what’s your take on defy, like decentralized finance? Where do you see that fitting in with adoption? And also like, as someone that runs a centralized exchange too, like, how do you see defy plugging from that decentralized to the centralized kind of world?

[00:15:15] Rahul: Sure. Sure. So, thing you mentioned, you know, dollar cost averaging and you need to call it SIP or rupee cost averaging, and you see it. Cause you know, I see you like my posts on Twitter. I’ve been buying. Ether every single day for almost 2000 days straight. I love those tweets, man.

[00:15:29] Luke: Doing the pushups, right?

[00:15:31] Rahul: I do four things. I do a hundred pushups. I buy some Bitcoin, I buy some Ether, and I buy some BAT. Love it. Those are the three tokens that I’m, that I’m super passionate about. And what’s funny is my legal team is, you know, be very careful, but I’ll tell you what, that is financial advice. I financially advise you to buy Bitcoin, Ether, and BAT, that I’m a big believer in, and I’m not doing it because I’m eating my own cooking.

[00:15:54] Really the question on like, you know, where we’re going, what was the question again? Well,

[00:15:58] Luke: it’s kind of how, as, as somebody that’s running a [00:16:00] centralized exchange, we’re, we’re How do you see DeFi playing with that, right? Because they’re kind of two different sides of the coin, but they’re inevitably connected because you’ve got, you know, your customers still have to off ramp somewhere.

[00:16:11] The off ramp options for self custody are pretty weak or depending on where you’re at. Like, I don’t know. I mean, like I know from the U. S. perspective, it’s just pretty dicey, but I would imagine in India too, there’s probably some compliance or process that they’re checking the off ramps, right? Like, so, so how do you see it?

[00:16:25] Both is like a value in for a central exchange, but like, as these protocols are just like always kind of iterating as a centralized player in this space, where do you see that fitting into the bigger picture? Like is it something that you’re encouraging people to try out or, you know, do you see that as competitive or, or more of a cooperative thing?

[00:16:45] Rahul: Exactly hit the nail on the head. So, you know, ZEPP is like Coinbase or in the U. S. or if you’re looking at other markets, there’s a large regionalized, say, fiat on ramp exchange. Our biggest use case is helping people buy rupees to Bitcoin or rupees to [00:17:00] Ether, rupees to Solana. I think what happens, my viewpoint is DEXs have a very, very important role.

[00:17:06] And central exchanges have a very important role. We’re the biggest gate into, let’s say blockchain assets. And I think what happens is over the next five, 10 years, regulators are going to use us as a way to almost bless what assets should be on a centralized exchange and let’s use Bitcoin and a theme.

[00:17:23] So obviously Bitcoin is, has, done really well this past year. It’s got approved for an ETF. And I think let’s say it’s a B, which is the Indian version of the SEC. It’s going to prove certain assets, whether it’s Bitcoin or Ethereum or Solana or, you know, Binance, whatever BNB chain, what will end up happening is, for example, if you want to trade a meme coin, that meme coin is not on an exchange, then, you know, it’ll probably come with like a quote unquote, like, you know, almost like a surgeon general warning, like an SAB warning.

[00:17:48] Hey, listen, you’re dealing with high risk assets and Here’s all these disclaimers and, you should know that, you might get defraud or a BNC, but if you’re dealing with Bitcoin or Ethereum and you’re dealing with a certain regulated exchange, [00:18:00] then we regulate these, companies, we regulate these products.

[00:18:02] And these are almost kind of like triple A crypto assets, right? And then, but I think it really almost goes like, there’s a lot of triple A assets, which I think Bitcoin fits for sure. And maybe ETH, maybe Solana, maybe some other ones, but there’s a lot of quote unquote F assets, but sometimes people like trading junk bonds.

[00:18:18] Right. They enjoy trading junk bonds because they know that if for some reason a bank should court rules one way or another, the junk bond could be worth a lot. So to me, there’s a lot of cool assets like meme coins where people want to trade. And the second thing I’d say is there’s a lot of also really cool, let’s say things that don’t happen in centralization, much harder, for example, NFTs.

[00:18:38] NFTs aren’t really considered DeFi, but I think they’re also brand new, interesting ideas, whether they’re, profile pictures or art, or even like access to things. And these are things which it’s very hard for centers exchange to kind of do. The cool thing I’d say, I look at Zeppe, Zeppe is really kind of like thinking of it as a beginners to intermediate version of blockchain.

[00:18:57] And then when you want to get more intermediate to more [00:19:00] complex, then you’re using like self hosted wallets. Web3 wallets, defy and things like that. What’s really cool. And you’ve seen it the past couple of years, these new web three platforms are actually on what we call it wallets and browsers. They’re slowly starting to get more and more users, right?

[00:19:14] And braves on a phenomenal job. You have, I’ve been very impressed with the wallet and how it’s going.

[00:19:18] Luke: Yeah. So working with the regulators to like, in India, are you finding that there are pretty well educated on the topic or is education kind of a big part of that interaction? How is that relationship gone with that pay?

[00:19:30] Like, I know how it is in the U. S. It’s almost like going in is like, uh, setting yourself up for target practice in a way. But, but, um, how is that in India? Is it a different kind of climate environment with the regulatory system there? And he’s like, I can’t say

[00:19:43] Rahul: five or 10 years kind of behind the U. S.

[00:19:44] Maybe five years in this. And what’s happened here is that just this past few months, a couple of different members of parliament have publicly disclosed that they own shares of Bitcoin ETF, which is amazing because [00:20:00] it really shows that, you know, it’s slowly happening bit by bit. And on the U S side, I think by May, 2017, a couple of congressmen and senators own like Bitcoin and ether.

[00:20:09] So what’s really cool is, is it you are finding a minority 5 to 10 percent of regulators and politicians really understand this stuff. They understand how it works. You can talk to him about like, you know, smart contracts. You can talk to him about a store of value and things like that. But I’d say the majority, whether it’s 51 percent or 60 percent still don’t really understand it.

[00:20:27] They don’t really understand what it is and why it’s important, but that’s why there’s so much opportunity.

[00:20:32] Luke: And

[00:20:32] Rahul: in a country of size of 1. 5 billion people, almost right, even 10 percent is 150 million. It’s wild. Yeah. And so what will end up happening is, I think what’s really good is it because it’s a democracy, it hasn’t been quote, unquote, banned, like in China, it’s going to slowly pick up more and more.

[00:20:50] And especially as different, let’s say members of parliament, which is kind of like our Congress, different politicians start adopting this. I think that [00:21:00] it becomes a more important narrative. So I don’t, it’s just like, it’s, was, I’d say for the first time, this election cycle, crypto is kind of becoming an interesting part.

[00:21:07] It’s not like obviously the most important, but it’s an interesting side narrative of what’s happening. Like everyone wants to know how does Biden or Trump or Kennedy support this stuff? No one’s really asking how the candidates need to support this yet, but I think the next cycle or the cycle after that.

[00:21:20] It’ll be very, very similar. People ask, Hey, what is your take on Bitcoin? What is your take on taxes? What are your takes on privacy? It’s going to become a much bigger for the next five or 10 years.

[00:21:28] Luke: That’s awesome. It is really interesting to see the iteration, right? Like I think, uh, we went to eat Denver in 2018 and people were talking about, uh, uh, cryptocurrency is not a crime in the context of, well, someone could actually shut it down.

[00:21:39] And now it’s like, kind of like, okay, it’s spread out to where it is really decentralized enough to a point where you couldn’t have a single entity really shut it down. Which is amazing. I mean, I think it’s a testament to the conviction of people in the space that it’s grown to the degree that it has to where, you know, ETFs are a thing and yeah, it’ll be interesting to see where it goes for sure.

[00:21:55] I mean, you know, institutions are getting more involved in retail. Like do you see a gap there that [00:22:00] they could be filled with what you guys are doing at ZepPay and, and are there other markets you guys are looking at too, like outside of India that are interesting right now?

[00:22:06] Rahul: Yeah. On the retail and call it high net worth institutional, we’re, because we’re the, one of the, you know, the, the earliest like Bitcoin exchanges, we kind of service all of them.

[00:22:14] I do think that I just saw the stat that there’s about 800, 000, maybe 900, 000 millionaires, millionaires in India, which is, you know, a large number, but it’s tiny fraction compared to the number of people there. So these are Indians that have a million dollars of financial net worth. And I bet you less than like maybe.

[00:22:32] Less than 1 percent of them, 10, 000 own Bitcoin. And so there’s so much opportunity because about them owning Bitcoin, because let’s say that million becomes 10 million or million becomes a hundred million the next 20, 30, 40 years. Right. They’re going to really own these, assets. So really like, you know, there’s like so much potential for, let’s say retail and family offices and high net worth people over the next couple of years on where we operate.

[00:22:57] We’re officially a Singapore company. So [00:23:00] Zeppe is incorporated in Singapore. We’re in the process of getting a license through MAS. I think we’re the only exchange in India that’s trying to use it. It’s a tough process. Uh, you have to go through a ton of steps, compliance, security, you know, uh, cold storage, all these different pieces.

[00:23:13] Like I said, it’s so tough that most people aren’t doing it. India, I think is a few years behind. They’re going to be a few years away from regulating it. I hope they adopt a system like, Vara in Dubai, UAE or the MAS. But like I said, they’re not really thinking about this. It has, it’s not on top of mind for them.

[00:23:29] I’d say we’re officially a global company is headquartered out of Singapore and we do service customers from around the world. Other than the U S we’re not, we don’t, we haven’t been operating here just because it’s complex in America, but other than that, we kind of service customers globally from Singapore.

[00:23:42] Luke: Do you see like any hotspots among customers where things are really popping right now?

[00:23:46] Rahul: Because we’re, kind of like an Indian centric, Indian origin company. If you go to countries that have very high Indian origin, you know, people, whether it’s in Singapore, whether it’s in Australia, parts of the UK, parts of Canada, we have customers from all over the world.

[00:23:59] [00:24:00] The place where I just, you know, we were talking about earlier is Dubai. Dubai is so interesting. Dubai has a very high amount of South Asian community. It’s really becoming almost like a blockchain capital for Asia. Yeah, it’s in the Middle East.

[00:24:12] Luke: It really seems like it. I mean, like, I mean, even when we launched BAT, right?

[00:24:15] Like initially that was a 2017, like it was very much okay. You’re either in Korea or, you know, Singapore or, you know, the West. Right. And, between then and now, like Dubai has just totally popped up as this like new hub. Right. and I love that. I mean, even in the U S we’re starting to see little hubs popping up here and there.

[00:24:32] So I’m pretty, pretty excited about that too. So running a, an exchange, you know, like obviously like you’re having to deal with a lot of things, whether it’s price activity, et cetera, how do you guys manage risk when you’re looking at like things as a custodian.

[00:24:44] Rahul: So yeah, it’s definitely been around for a while.

[00:24:46] Like literally I said, we’re like the, you know, the Coinbase or a Kraken, even the Gemini of the state of the industry in India. So it’s, it’s hard. It’s, it’s really, really complex. There’s so many different. People out there to get you, not, not, not just hackers and [00:25:00] malicious actors, but like, you know, even competitors and regulators and bankers and policymakers.

[00:25:05] So what we’ve done is we invest a lot of time, money, energy into security and privacy and things like this, because you’ll see a lot of things about like different. Companies stuff going into the dark web or hackers coming in. And like I said, we’ve been, we’ve been pretty careful about what we do in large part that it comes back to the team because we’ve been around for a long time.

[00:25:25] We know how this stuff works and we invest money into keeping clients assets safe. We work really hard on following all the best practices in the world. We study and learn from the best, even from break. We learned some great stuff from you guys. We look up to the really, the top tier players, whether it’s Binance and Coinbase and just try to follow best practices.

[00:25:46] And like I said, luckily we’ve kind of avoided a lot of icebergs, which have knocked other people over.

[00:25:52] Luke: That’s awesome, man. Probably testament to the process. Right. As somebody that’s, that’s got an eye on startups, [00:26:00] what would you give advice for, like, someone that’s considering starting, you know, a new company like Entrepreneur in any of these fields?

[00:26:07] If you knew then what you know now, for a founder, like, what advice would you give to somebody that’s looking to get into these spaces?

[00:26:14] Rahul: We talked about earlier how like, I think the beat, the three big trends for the next several decades are AI, blockchain, and our family is big healthcare investors, right?

[00:26:24] So I know a lot about that. And then obviously the other big vector that I’m working on is India. My big advice generally is this, is that there’s a lot of things that can go wrong. And in the end, the best thing is, I talked about this idea of Ohana, it’s like a family. Zed pay. We have this idea that if you treat customers and shareholders and employees, like family, then there’s a competitive advantage there.

[00:26:46] And I kind of learned this from our own, our own family business. And so what we’ve done is my, my I’ve been working with my parents, my brother, my sister, and And I think one big reason why we’re successful is, is we treat each other like mutual respect. It’s kind of hard because it’s hard working with your family, but like [00:27:00] when you, when you have something, you have to trust them.

[00:27:01] And so the advice for founders is you got to find another co founder who you’re willing to like treat like a brother or sister. And that means you got to trust that person speak with total honesty and you get their back and they have your back. Right. And so one picking a really good founder is important.

[00:27:19] The second thing is, I’d say really, if you don’t love what you’re doing, then someone’s going to beat you. Look, can you see what, cause you and I have interacted quite a bit is that I love, love, love what I do. Right. Yeah. Yeah. And I put my life force into it. Right. I buy these crypto assets more than I brush my teeth.

[00:27:37] Right. Like I haven’t brushed my teeth and I bought, you know, Bitcoin on those days. And so if you want to do something. You should realize that there’s 7 billion people or whatever in the world. And if you want to kick ass, you’re competing against these other people who were amazing and they, are going to want to eat your lunch.

[00:27:55] So you’re prepared to love it. If you do love it, then [00:28:00] you’re going to do well and you’ve got to find this mission. So for me, I’m going to go back to like the mission for zipping. Our mission is. We want to onboard like a billion people, a billion Indians into Bitcoin, right? We believe like the best way to financial freedom are these blockchain assets.

[00:28:14] And if we can help people onboard into things like Bitcoin, then they achieve financial freedom. So we would look at ourselves as being advisors. And if you go look at our team, like our team’s passionate about this stuff. And so what I recommend for someone else, imagine you’re going to start like a. A web three company, you should really understand your why.

[00:28:30] Like I say, you want to start a web three, a web three company around ticketing or something, or what’s your company around art. Hopefully you love art or what the company around music. Hopefully you love, you love music. And if you do love music, then great. Then you should figure out how, you know, you’re, you know, Idea can help onboard more people into music and you should work on it day and night.

[00:28:48] And if you do that, then what I love about entrepreneurship, it’s, it’s the biggest leverage for improving the world, right? If, if entrepreneurs, if done properly, can with not that much capital can, can cause extraordinary change in the world. And I think [00:29:00] brave is a perfect example of that brave is battling these giants.

[00:29:02] Google and Apple and Microsoft and it’s doing it with being more efficient. So it’s quite amazing. So that I want to see more stuff like that happen.

[00:29:10] Luke: Awesome, man. Well, I can’t think of a better note to end on. Is there anything that you might want to let the audience know about that we didn’t cover?

[00:29:16] Rahul: Yeah.

[00:29:17] No, the last thing I’m saying is that like, I buy Bitcoin, Ether, and BAT every single day. I just said, I recommend dollar cost averaging. And the reason why we do this is at the ZPay side, ZPay has this thing called houses. And what we do is, it’s cool. Like, like literally within ZPay, you have to join a house.

[00:29:32] And so, When you come in, like you have to pick, Hey, do you want to go to the Bitcoin house, the ether house or the bat house? And as you know, like when I first did this, I was like, you know, why do we have, like, why are we using the bat house? Is it, you know, why don’t we have like a zip pay house? And I was like, well, listen, the idea behind this is it.

[00:29:47] I feel like Bitcoin was amazing as it launched. And then ether was built on top of Bitcoin. And then bat was built on top of, of Ethereum. And what’s cool is a throwback to the whole brave team is. Our biggest house is the bat house and people love [00:30:00] brave. They love using it. We have, I think, you know, close to 50 plus team members and, you know, HANA members who are part of the bat house.

[00:30:07] They’re enormous fans of brave and bat. They’re throwing all types of stuff. We have all these independent events thrown by our team in India, like conferences, workshops, they pay for themselves. They helped sponsored a student run concert. All I’m saying is, hey, listen, if you’re passionate about this stuff, you don’t need permission.

[00:30:23] You know, you can have your own bat parties. Yeah. Yeah. I think bats an awesome asset. Really excited about it. Love what the team is building and Zeppe is proud to be part of the, say, the brave family and we’re hoping to continue building with you guys in the future. Amen to that. Where can people find you online?

[00:30:41] If you want to follow Zepe, we’re, we’re at Zepe on Twitter, you know, I’m also on Twitter. Just if you type in Zepe, you’ll find me, but my, my Twitter handle is at eth underscore U S ethos. Awesome. You know, I’m a big ether, ether bull. So, uh, I, I’ve had that for like, I don’t know, like probably since ether was like 10.

[00:30:55] And

[00:30:57] Luke: so,

[00:30:59] Rahul: [00:31:00] yeah, so just follow me. There’s Rahul patty, patty search for me or you’ll find me on Twitter and, and looking forward to connecting to. As many people as possible.

[00:31:08] Luke: Awesome, man. Well, I really appreciate you’ve been super gracious with your time today, Rahul, and I’d love to have you back to, uh, at some point in the future to just check back in on things.

[00:31:15] Thanks again for dropping by. We’ll talk again soon. Awesome. Thanks, Luke. Thanks guys. Have a good one. Thanks for listening to the brave technologist podcast to never miss an episode. Make sure you hit follow in your podcast app. If you haven’t already made the switch to the brave browser, you can download it for free today at brave.

[00:31:32] com. And start using Brave Search, which enables you to search the web privately. Brave also shields you from the ads, trackers, and other creepy stuff following you across the web.