“Bixtrim is us, Bixtrim is you, Bixtrim is the future“ – with these words every single employee of the company is motivated every day. The company, founded only 7 months ago, focuses not just on the Georgian market, but has set itself the goal of gaining international recognition. As one of the founders of the company says, their main trump card is the team that lays a brick every day to support the development of the digital economy. One of the founders of Bixtrim, Mr. Artur Arabiani, tells us that in order to make their business fully operational, the founders of the company donated almost 2 million from their own pockets. They also applied their knowledge of the investment sphere and set a common goal – to simplify daily access to the digital economy for ordinary people.
When did your team begin to realize the idea of establishing a company working within the digital economy?
In 2016 our team started mining and from that moment on we became familiar with the industry. As owners of cryptocurrency, we tried to be aware of the issues and innovation around it, especially its relation to exchange. Of course we also wanted to have crypto in our everyday lives and make it global by giving it a multifunctional use. At first, that was the exact reason why we initially decided to create our own exchange platform, so we could provide our innovational ideas and make decisions about it. As our team members met and exchanged ideas, they started to have a growing urge to realize these ideas. We decided to commence the ICO and provide liquidity to the functions we had in mind. We have created a platform that can promote an increase in the use of crypto currency and we also added some new features, such as Pawnshop, Futures, Escrow and the exchange of cryptocurrencies. We also plan to create our own crypto currency in the near future, but these will not be tokens. Our crypto currency will be based on an independent block chain and it will have the capacity to carry out over 100,000 transactions per second. The ultimate goal is that in the future we can pay with crypto currency in stores.
What was your start-up capital when you founded the company and how large is Bixtrim’s profit at the moment?
We invested between $1,5-2 million to create the company and this money was apportioned through all the stages of the company’s development in order to ensure its efficient functioning. At this point, the company has not moved to profit yet, since all the investments that were required for the creation of the company came from personal funds. In other words, we did not receive any outside financial support. Our company launched sales on June 1, 2018, and thus it is too early to talk about profits yet. However, the number of people willing to invest is already fairly high.
Tell us a little bit about your team. Who are the people that by your own account are creating innovations and making the company successful?
At the present moment, there are 20 people working at the Georgian office of the company. We also practice outsourcing from Belarus and Ukraine, as well as several European countries. The management of the company is based in Tbilisi. Both professionals and enthusiast have shared ideas that have helped us and inspired us to make the use of cryptocurrency easier for people who haven’t even had contact with this part of the world or on the contrary, those who have had a lot of contact. We founded the company in December of 2017 and despite the fact that we have been operating on the market for less than a year, we have managed to gain recognition and the trust of our customers – not only in Georgia, but also in the post-Soviet space, as well as some European countries as well. During the past six months, we have attended various international conferences, where people recognized us and moreover, a lot of people have shown interest in investing in Bixtrim. All of this is thanks to the people who united around one idea and who have spared no efforts in seeing to it that we succeed.
What is the specificity of your work?
Our specific approach to work rests on the principle that no matter what position a person holds in the company, they are still a leader. We encourage and embrace initiatives offered by all our employees, regardless of whether this person is a developer, a call-center operator or a janitor. By the way, on a number of occasions, brilliant ideas came from the least expected people in the company and these ideas eventually materialized. What I am trying to say is that we have a very liberal approach to work. We have often been compared with smaller version of Google. We have a very open and liberal approach to many issues within the company, but at the same time we respect the principle of subordination and I believe that the success of the company largely depends on it.
Is your company focused only on Georgia or are you planning to expand your operations to the international market in order to attract foreign investors and consumers with your platform – particularly in view of the fact that the industry you operate in is becoming increasingly competitive?
When we founded this company our goal wasn’t to operate only on the local market, but we initially wanted to enter the international market as well, since the interest for crypto currency is very high in these countries. As for the competition, it is rather high. The ICO trends began to emerge in 2017 and since then, these trends have increased. There are quite a few ICOs now, but most of them have nothing to do with the blockchain system. On the other hand, our company is shifting from crowdfunding to the ICO method. Our idea is entirely based on the blockchain system and one of the components of this idea is to promote the development of crypto currency, not just in Georgia, but also on the world market. Owing to our innovative ideas and functions that we offer our customers, we basically have no competitors.
Perhaps you will agree that the risks in your area of work are very high and the public trust is rather low. This public scepticism is mainly due to low awareness. How do you assess these risks?
As you well know, any business activity involves certain risk. Each member of our team works hard to make this product stable and to increase public interest from year-to-year. You are probably wondering how we manage to raise interest among the public. We manage to do that by the tokens that people can buy from the Bixtrim website. Those who buy tokens are offered discount coupons on our platform.
Tell us about the project, that you’re implementing now?
Our project presents itself as a universal crypto exchange platform with fully innovational and universal functions, which have not been introduced to this sector before. The project itself will be divided in stages. The first one is preparing and carrying out the ICO, which will be going on until the autumn of this year. This is divided into four parts. 10, 800, 000 tokens will be sold in discount packages, including: Private sale from June 1-20; Phase I sales (June 21-30); Phase II sales (July 1-15) and Phase III sales (July 16-31).The regular sales process begins from August 1- September 30 and the second stage is the one where the platform itself will commence and all functions can be accessed.
What are your predictions?
Our ICO sells 50, 000, 000 tokens. As I mentioned earlier, we launched sales on June 1 and the starting amount was 20 cents. By the completion of the trade in early or maximum mid-October, we estimate to earn the equivalent of $51 million in crypto currency.
Since you are so motivated and work diligently to succeed, I assume that your plans for the future must be large-scale and quite interesting. Could you tell us a little bit about the next level of development of your company and its strategy?
First of all, let me explain to you why we transitioned to ICO and decided to attract investment. In order to position our company on the market with our current functions, we absolutely need to have liquidity. That is exactly why we decided to go to ICO. In approximately 2-3 months, after the completion of the ICO, we plan to launch our platform. As for our long-term plans, starting from next spring, we plan to expand our company on the international level and open offices abroad. We have tried to identify the countries that demonstrate more interest towards our sphere and our observation revealed that France, Britain, Finland, Ukraine, Russia and Kazakhstan are all good options. Obviously, it would be hard to expand our operations in all the listed countries next year, but I know for sure that we will open our representative offices in six countries. At the same time, we also plan to expand on the local market and open two regional offices in Kutaisi and Batumi.
I would also like to mention that some of our other goals include the issue of a new coin and a plastic card in order to improve payments and transactions.
