This is my interview with Vakhtang Abuladze, the CEO of Bazista! Bazista is an e-commerce platform where you can trade goods and services for cryptocurrency! They are currently running an ICO now, you can check it out by visiting their website: https://bazista.io
1. Can you present yourself and your background?
So, I was born in Russia in 1991. I has a degree in Accounting, analysis and audit of the Tver State University (Russia). In 2013 I moved to Georgia and entered to ESM Business School of Free University of Tbilisi. In 2015 I Obtained a master’s degree (MBA) in Operation Management. During the studies, I worked at the financial Department in one of the largest retail chain of Georgia — Nugeshi. From September 2015, until 2017 I worked as an Audit consultant in PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) — Big Four Moscow office.
2. How did you start working for Bazista?
The moment when I really got into the whole blockchain and crypto thing was in early spring of 2017. Realizing that most cryptocurrencies were supported by speculative operations me and the rest of the team have started thinking about an infrastructural solution, which would bring real value for decentralized money. The concept of Bazista — a new type of e-commerce platform came soon after that. We decided to create a solution that is equally intuitive and efficient to use versus solutions that were available on the market at the moment.
Idea of an online marketplace came way before Bazista with part of the team had been involved in the development and maintenance of a small local online marketplace in Russia. This accumulated experienced has enabled us to develop the beta version of the platform and design the financial model and consumer launch strategy in less than 12 month. Integration of cryptocurrencies has always seemed to be extremely relevant for the e-commerce, especially when there are obvious barriers that can be easily overcome thanks to decentralized money. I think we are hitting the spot with Bazista, as other e-com players now start considering integration of cryptocurrencies as well.
3. What is your main job and tasks in Bazista?
I am in charge of general management and financial planning in the company. During our preparations for the ICO I was developing the financial model and business plan for the first 5 years. I have also composed the Terms & Conditions and key documents for our investors. Besides, I was presenting Bazista on various industry events and negotiated with potential strategic partners and large investors.
4. Making everything ready for the tokensale is a lot of work. How did you prepare for that?
I believe that a big part of project success is Team. Enablers and real doers united to create and deliver Bazista as one of the best performing E-commerce platform based on digital assets payment solutions and blockchain technology advantages.. As a Bazista CEO, I should organize effective work of all team members and coordinating all movements. We worked 24 hours to present Bazista for investors. We focused on ICO promotion campaign, as well as on creating MVP of online trading platform. So, community has a chance to explore what we are doing and how it will work. I hope that the community and investors will appreciate our efforts.
5. What is the specific use of BZT token?
First of all, there is a limited amount of BZS tokens that will be created without any additional amounts to be created in the future. 440 000 000 BZS tokens is the total emission with 76% of those will be available for sale. Once and for good.
Secondly, growing audience of the Bazista platform will constantly increase the demand for the platform’s tokens, as it does present a number of significant advantages both for buyers and sellers, that will operate using Bazista. Flexible commission system is build up on the amount of tokens that a certain user deposits on his account. It can go as low as 0% once a user deposits over 48 000 of BZS tokens.
Discounted sales which will be organized on the platform supported by our own reserve fund will only allow users to pay with BZS tokens. Basically, this means that if you want to buy a certain product for a lower price you will look for BZS tokens.
Only most popular products will be included into discounted sales.
Sellers will be able to purchase our analytical dashboard to understand what is on demand at the moment, filtering behavioural data by categories, markets, periods and target groups.
At the same time promoters, which will help other users to sell their products will receive the commissions in BZS tokens as well, which will afterwards may use them to start trading within Bazista, even if you didn’t have money to start trading in the beginning.
Finally, the platform will allow users to purchase monthly packages, which would include a certain amount of free deals and various additional services to help you operate more efficiently within Bazista. Users will enjoy an automated deal form completion, helping you to post an offer with a photo and a couple of clicks.
All of these services will be made available for BZS tokens as well.
To summarize all of the above means that our token is an inflationary asset by it’s nature. Created model will insure high consumer demand for our token at the end resulting in a constantly growing price.
6. How will you use blockchain in your project?
Bazista — online marketplace which aims to bring down e-commerce barriers through deep integration of decentralized money as a payment instrument. E-commerce democratization, which Bazista brings, stands for unlimited access to the global online trading for millions of small and micro businesses around the world.
Bazista is looking to use only decentralized money as a payment instrument, seeing it as a way to overcome key barriers for a broader ecom distribution within the developing markets.
Few weeks ago, Bazista & Velix.ID announced strategic partnership — two companies will work on integrating their solutions for the good of Bazista buyers and sellers.Velix.ID develops a solution for seamless, but secure identity verification using Blockchain technology, targeting both private users and businesses, especially those that buy and sell online.
Besides that, we have negotiations with couple of projects for implementing logistics solutions by using blockchain. Logistic is one of the main Ecommerce problems issue and we are ready to pay more attention for it.
One of the main case of Bazista operating market is reviews and customer rating system, so this direction is also under the discussion with various of projects and we hope that till the end of 2nd round of ICO we announce strategic partnership with one of them.
7. There is a lot of competition out there, how is Bazsta standing out from similar projects?
There are not so many ICO projects that declare online marketplaces market development. We position ourselves as a marketplace, which is going to implement a lot of modern technological solutions on the platform. They are augmented reality, virtual reality, neural networks, machine learning, verification of users with blockchain, transparent and objective system of feedback from buyers and sellers, and many other solutions that will allow users of Bazista trading platform to carry out convenient and practical shopping experience.
Below you will find our key advantages:
- The maximum operational commission will be 4%, which is at least two times lower than competitors
- Transactions on Blockchain technology are significantly safer than simple electronic or bank transactions. Bazista is the first blockchain empowered company to allow purchasing of goods and services
- Cryptocurrency gives global e-commerce access to more than 2,5 billion unbanked people and millions of businesses around the world.
- Integration of cryptocurrencies will also reduce expenses of traditional banking service and conversion fees for international payments. Buyers will save an average of 3–5% when trading overseas.
Bazista ambassadors — up to 10 000 well trained high skill professionals will work in the fields selecting the best offline businesses, checking their assortment and quality of goods and finally connecting them online through Bazista.
8. When the tokensale is over, what is the main things Bazista will spend its funds for?
According to our own research and financial modeling, we will reach our first profitable year by 2020 and will reach the EBITDA parameter of 1,045 million US dollars, recruiting over 361 000 users to the platform. Main expenses for sort term period are online platform finalizing and developing mobile apps. Also, we have developed marketing and promotion strategic plan for 2 years (2018–2020) in amount of $4,5M.
We have ambitious plan to quickly conger our share of Indian market at it’s early days and India is fastest growing e-commerce market in world, soon to take 2nd place after China. But at the same time India has over 20% of world’s unbanked population with most of them being cut off from the global e-commerce trading. However with the use of decentralized money Bazista will be able to get millions of India’s unbanked businesses online, allowing them to start trading for crypto. After 2020 we are planning to start expansion to the neighboring markets including Indonesia, Malaysia and even Philippines.
9. If you could say a few things to the potential investors, what would you like to say to them? Is there anything you wish you and the company did different, or would you like to add something?
First of all, Bazista token is utility token with many functions inside the platform. So we develop ecosystem, which will have permanent demand on the Bazista token and in conditions of limitless edition, BZS token should be very liquid and increasing it’s value. Our ICO will end at 6 of March 2018 and we plan to list on some crypto exchanges and it will be possible for our investors trading by BZS token.
Second point is that we have developed financial projection plan with our financial advisors for 5 years to year 2023. All projections and estimates are made based on official statistical information and marketing researches. According to this estimations, Bazista project will touch Break-even point in 2020 with more than $1m EBITDA. As I think it will be really success for the project and in parallel with the company success, BZS tokens will also grow up, but it is very difficult to give an accurate forecast on token price. All investors and Bazista community members may find this projections on our website: https://bazista.io
We see Bazista as being both commerce and humanitarian project. Decentralized money can become a real solution for over 2 billion unbanked people around the world, but giving the fact that crypto industry itself is at it’s early stages of development, we should start thinking about infrastructural solutions like banks or marketplaces today! By utilizing the power of blockchain we will provide unlimited access to e-commerce for any person in the world!
Enjoy Bazista!
- Vakhtang Abuladze
Visit their webiste for more information about Bazista and their token sale: https://bazista.io
Ann thread: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2258692