Ready to take Dether to India and beyond
Currently finishing his MBA, the newest member of the Dether team, Yatin, is a multilingual marketing expert and blockchain passionate who eats, breathes, and sleeps crypto. Originally from Delhi, India, he has both a Bachelor’s and Master’s degree in economics, and five years of expertise in the field. We sat down with him to find out more.
I’m looking forward to doing a bit of everything! I have one big ambitious mission: to spread Dether in THE country (almost a continent) where cash is widely used and where the demand for cryptocurrency keeps increasing everyday … India! I’ll be doing community management and helping to grow the Dether community in India.
I’m also certified in Google Analytics and Google AdWords, so I’ll be using my marketing tools to help create campaigns that allow Dether to continue growing worldwide.
People are generally very interested in cryptocurrency. With new coins coming on the scene every day, many people are interested in new projects and new coins, but don’t know where to learn more about them, or how they work.
While India is home to some of its very own exchanges, people usually rely on the larger and more well-known exchanges. While I’m unaware of any local merchants that accept cryptocurrency, I think there’s a lot of potential there. There are already some Indian third-party applications that allow people to make purchases with cryptocurrencies like ether. These applications automatically convert your cryptocurrency into the currency you’re paying with on a platform like Amazon. This is all very new, however, and far from being adopted throughout the country.
Like many countries, it’s rare that an exchange accepts our fiat currency. This means that most people end up paying not only processing fees, but also conversion fees. When fiat is accepted, serves are often overloaded and crash. The government recently voiced their support for blockchain technology, but their distrust of Bitcoin as a legal tender — so I think there’s still a long way to go.
I think the decentralized aspect is exactly why it’s so slow to be adopted in other countries. Unfortunately there seems to be a lot of fear and misinformation about how it works, and a lot of focus on the negative aspects. As I said before, even in India, the government itself is interested, but distrustful. People need information. Also, in many countries, the local currency isn’t supported, or it’s very devalued, so that makes it really difficult.
For me, working with Dether represents the possibility to put all of my skills to use in one place. I was first interested in the potential of the project, but I was really sold when I had the chance to meet Dether’s co-founder, Hamid.
There’s technical aspects, marketing aspects, and community aspects to which I can bring new energy and new expertise. Plus, I really think this project is extremey important for countries where the national currency is devalued. Dether will be an important bridge between their fiat and the blockchain ecosystem.
In my previous job I had to do a lot of research about bitcoin, so I became interested in the technology behind it. Then from there, I started becoming interested in projects myself, and expanded into Ripple and Ethereum. Then I was hooked!
Are there any blockchain personalities you admire?
I prefer to do my homework and not pay too much attention to blockchain celebrities. I focus on reading articles and keeping up with the news to see which projects have potential, and what’s happening in the blockchain world that could have a major impact on the future.
It’s a very multicultural, like my home in Delhi. I love to travel and had the chance to visit a few times before moving here to study. Plus, my sister is working on her PhD close by. I really like having the opportunity to work with students from so many different countries. Europe is a special continent — sometimes it drives you crazy, but you definitely can’t ignore it!
I speak Hindi, Punjabi, and English, so that’s a start. And I’m still a beginner in French!
I’m very easy to get along with and pretty relaxed — I think that’s very important when it comes to community management and building new online communities. I love to interact with people! I really love what I do. Even in my downtime, I’m always learning about new blockchain technologies and new projects to support — that’s my idea of fun.
More questions for Yatin? Drop by our Telegram channel to find out more!
