Blockchain Start-ups: Meet the founders of RecordsKeeper
MLG Blockchain Consulting is committed to supporting unique and upcoming projects on their journey towards successfully integrating their blockchain technology. And we know many of you are curious to dive deep in the minds behind these novel blockchain projects.
That’s why we decided to kickstart Blockchain Start-ups — Meet the Founders Series. In this series, we aim to support your learning progression of the most disruptive blockchain companies by asking insightful questions to the founders themselves! Today, meet Toshendra Sharma, the application security and blockchain expert behind RecordsKeeper.
- How did you first get involved with the blockchain century?
The first time we came across blockchain technology was in early 2011, when we tried to set up a Bitcoin node for mining in my hostel room. We were fascinated with the technology and that is where it all began.
2. What inspired the idea of your ICO, was it spontaneous? Was it an idea you had for a long time?
This is a project we’ve been working on for two years, not one that just occurred to us overnight. The idea for RecordsKeeper was born out of a desire to help users with structured record keeping and open data security. We thought quite carefully about how to best deliver the project, and since we all had previous exposure to blockchain technology, we thought it made sense for a project such as this one to be built on its own public blockchain.
When we began working on this project in 2016, ICOs weren’t really prevalent yet, so launching an ICO just wasn’t at all in our plans. However, once we decided that RecordsKeeper would have its own public blockchain, an ICO seemed to fit nicely with the project. Additionally, over the last year, ICOs have increasingly become the main way to break into the market and to attract mature users and we wanted to capitalize on this opportunity. Hence, we decided to launch this XRK sale.
3. What did you do before starting RecordsKeeper? Did you demonstrate prior expertise in blockchain?
Before RecordsKeeper, we were working on a mobile application security product called Appvigil, for which we used concepts like cryptography that were also applicable to RecordsKeeper. Our experience with Appvigil really helped us grasp the concept behind blockchain and its potential in the cybersecurity space much more quickly, because we already understood the necessary components to creating a security product. From there, we just began learning more and more about blockchain and eventually we started educating others about it as well.
4. Who is the team behind RecordsKeeper and why are they awesome?
Rohendra and I, Toshendra, started RecordsKeeper back in 2016. We both like to work on cutting edge technologies and we are very passionate about our products. Rohendra and I have known each other for a long time and we work really well together. Before becoming CTO at RecordsKeeper, he was the ex-VP Engineering at Appvigil. He is extremely knowledgeable and has experience in developing SaaS-based scalable products, so he brings a lot to the table. Pankaj is our sales and marketing director and is well-known for his impact on the banking and wealth management industry. He is really business savvy, but he also always wanted to learn more about new technologies and blockchain was the technology that pulled him over into tech.
5. How did you bring this idea to life?
After the conception of the idea, we started by building a Minimal Viable Product (MVP) that allowed users to create lockers which can hold multiple documents. These lockers can be assigned a particular category such as Income Tax Filing, which then forces a particular set of documents to be accepted into the locker. Through this, hash of documents were being stored on a private blockchain. Later on, we decided to stick the documents hashes into our blockchain and we launched RecordsKeeper as a public blockchain which allows users to upload up to 8MB of data as a part of a blockchain transaction.
6. What problem does your blockchain start-up plan to solve?
RecordsKeeper aims to provide a simple and cheap option for storing important data while ensuring immutability. We often go through expensive trusted third-parties to do this for us, but RecordsKeeper will do this better and for a more affordable price. Currently, no other Bitcoin-based blockchain allows users to upload large pieces of data as a part of a single transaction, so we also tried to fix that. The RecordsKeeper blockchain supports transaction size upto 8MB, which is needed to store huge records and is not present in other blockchains. RecordsKeeper also aims to facilitate retrieval and querying of data.
7. Please walk us through the user experience of someone who would use RecordsKeeper.
One of our main goals was to keep RecordsKeeper very intuitive. To begin using the RecordsKeeper public blockchain, users can either setup their own node or start with a pre-synced EC2 image. We also provide a node as a service, so that RecordsKeeper users don’t have to maintain the nodes. Once into the RecordsKeeper blockchain, users can use one of our many Software Development Kits (SDKs) to publish, retrieve, and verify data. Users can also build many complex applications such as Supply Chain management on top of the RecordsKeeper blockchain.
8. How big is the market you are addressing?
Data storage is a huge market. As more and more organisations are moving to blockchain across industries, the market size is continuing to increase. Even if RecordsKeeper claims two percent of the traditional database market, which was $50 Billion USD in 2017, our market share will be equivalent to $1 Billion USD.
9. Who are the major investors behind RecordsKeeper? (for cross-promotions and endorsements)
Currently RecordsKeeper is completely bootstrapped by our personal investments. We had many interests from Venture Capitalists and from large corporations but we decided to pass because we wanted to launch the product and build the community before accepting any outside investment.
10. Where is your blockchain startup registered? Which country?
RecordsKeeper is registered in Gibraltar, a British Overseas Territory on the Spanish peninsula.
11. What is your favourite blockchain that was created and why? Do you use it yourself?
We’re into the classics. We still find Bitcoin blockchain to be the most fascinating as it was the first blockchain implementation that eventually brought the blockchain revolution.
12. If you had the opportunity to meet the mysterious Satoshi Nakamoto, what is the one thing you would want to ask him?
I would like to ask him to explain to me exactly what was running through his mind when he thought of the Bitcoin as a cryptocurrency of the future.
If you want to learn more about RecordsKeeper, read their whitepaper and follow them on social media!
Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/recordskeeper/
Telegram: https://t.me/joinchat/B4T_PxInGAjiXLz1N66t3Q
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/recordskeeper
Twitter: https://twitter.com/records_keeper
