The ongoing monetary chaos in the nation has confused the public beyond reasonability. The demonetisation has brought forth several debates questioning the same. While many have come forward in support of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s decision, a few are against the ban of Rs 500 and Rs 1000 currency denominations.
Mirror had an opportunity to speak to some of the startup company masterminds from the silicon city of India, Bangalore to understand their perspective on demonetisation. After all, the agenda behind the whole money crusade is to reduce black money and also to boost digital India program by promoting digital transactions, which in turn helps the nation in having more liquidity in banks.
Nikhil Kumar, who is a startup enthusiast and a part of UPI – Unified Payment Interface program, shared some insights about how demonetisation is helpful for the nation. Nikhil explained how incorporation of unified payment interface, which is a new way to transfer money between bank accounts in India, can make banking less cumbersome by actually letting money transfer happen instantly between the banks, thus allowing transactions to become less cash based and more digital. UPI is an innovation led by National Payments Corporation of India, under the guidance of RBI.
Nikhil also suggests that the little inconvenience being felt currently will soon bring a lot of ease to public as well as to the entrepreneurs as the idea of demonetisation is revolutionary and UPI also works to make banking more digital. He also said the impact on the small scale businesses and vendors too would reduce as a large number of businesses are now adopting alternate payment methods to make it practical for customers.
We also spoke to Rohith Veerajappa, who is the co-founder of Wow Labz, an outsourced product development company, based out of Bangalore, regarding his thoughts about the demonetisation move, to which Rohith said, “I whole heartedly welcome it. However, in my humble opinion, it’s a step in the right direction but it’s half baked.”
Rohith added that while the new plan is to remove 500INR and 1000INR notes, by introduction of new notes, the point to be considered is that how many new notes will be introduced. He said, “cash is a menace and has led to tax defaulting, terror financing and what not.”
Rohith supports demonetisation by adding, “In 2013, hardly 1% population paid tax and the rest did not file as they were running cash based businesses and thus making it hard to hold them accountable.”
He believes India has to move towards being a cashless nation, forcing people to transact via banks and hence bringing everyone’s income and expenditure under the scanner.
On asking how has the movement impacted startup companies Rohith explains, “While there are a lot of naysayers, I think startups have embraced this situation. A lot of startups have found an opportunity amid this chaos. Many startups are now offering differed payment. For example Ola has started postpaid services wherein a customer gets 7 days credit. In the e-commerce sector, ~60% of purchases are cash based. This means higher transaction cost for the online retailer. Now with demonetisation, more people would move towards digital payments resulting in lesser transaction cost, but it may also lead to lower sales. Guess it’s a tricky situation here.”
He added, “Wallet companies like PayTM, Freecharge, MobiKwik are the biggest beneficiaries, who are now aggressively on boarding more customers and merchants. In general, we hope for some positive impact in the days to come. It could be with tax reduction as a consequence of generation of more tax revenue or better facilities for the tax we pay.”
Thus, it looks like the startup city Bangalore has whole heartedly accepted the move. Hoping that with days to come, the chaos would reduce and people would be able to see the fruits.
Source: MumbaiMirror
