Everything you always wanted to know about RanchiMall but were afraid to ask
1
Ranchi Mall is a self-funded enterprise. It’s been incorporated as a Blockchain Contract. In fact, everything in Ranchi Mall is a blockchain contract:
2
We realized the power of Facebook pretty early on. And we also realized that for information distribution purposes, in the early days when we were conceptualising Ranchi Mall, we did not even need a website. It takes a lot of work to get users to visit your website, and even more more, to get them to revisit. So, as a self-funded, bootstrapped startup, we just stuck with the Ranchi Mall page on Facebook. You can scroll all the way down to see the kinds of things we did before we got to where we are now. We have recorded every significant event in our facebook page:
http://facebook.com/ranchimall
3
The first commercial product from Ranchi Mall was Bitcoin Bonds. They were launched in February 2017. Bitcoin Bonds took 7 years to develop. It was an entirely new concept, it’s the first time in the world that a product which was totally created and distributed on the internet came into existence. We created a transaction website for Bitcoin Bond holders. Here is the list of all Bitcoin Bond customers:
4
Bitcoin Bonds were so profitable for us, that we were able to use 70 percent of the profits we gained from their sale toward the initial asset value for our Initial Coin Offering. It took us 2 months of dedicated thinking to imagine the details of the Initial Coin Offering (ICO). It’s all here in our Initial Coin offering whitepaper. We finished writing the whitepaper at the end of September 2017. Here it is:
5
We believe that, at this time, most employer-employee relationships are extremely stressful for both parties. In fact, in many ways, its like modern slavery. Why would you need to come exactly at 9 in morning to office ? Why do you need someone’s approval to take your family on a vacation. Why do you want to make employees over-compete with each other using performance appraisals. Why waste people’s time and sense of autonomy by making them fill in time-sheets. So we adopted a self leave policy. We do not have time sheets. We do not have performance appraisals. We do not even have a permanent office. All of us decide where to work from and when to work. Sometimes we meet in person and work together. We set up a field office in Bali for the entire the month of January, 2018. And when we meet, it’s creative, stimulating and fun:
6
We started our Initial Coin Offer with a token allocation of 30,000 tokens allotted at 1 USD per token. The initial token allocation was launched on 7th October, 2017. We developed our own exchange platform to enable token trading. We see crypto-currencies — in order to build a win-win scenario amongst investors — as a long term investment. We quickly realised the dangers and downsides of short term trading. We aim to build long term relationships with our investors. We want good quality investors. This required us to adopt some post-facto restrictions. Investors must stay long term with us. We do not want to feed the naked greed of short term investors. We develop and offer new and exciting eCommerce offerings. And we want our investors to be with us for the long term. Therefore, even though the prices went up from 1 USD per token to more than 900 USD per token, we are not letting our investors withdraw as yet. Of course, they are free to withdraw their original capital anytime and cancel the token sale. We will permit full asset withdrawal when it is safe to do so because 1) the culture of long term investment is established and, 2) Ranchi Mall Blockchain Contracts start building value and power in the market. Investors in Ranchi Mall tokens should expect to keep their initial investment with us for one to three years. This time could be extended if we come across unexpected headwinds. But, the time could also be shorter if we perform exceedingly well as we have done with our Bitcoin Bonds. We believe in and practice full transparency. All our ICO token holder names, holdings and, trades are publicly available. You cannot your investments in Ranchi Mall for money laundering or financing terrorism. Transparency is our defence. Here is our Initial Coin Offering exchange site:
http://ranchimall.net/exchange
7
Ranchi Mall is an Internet Company. It has no office. Being officeless permits us to work anywhere and with anyone in the world. It allows us to start out with a low cost structure, which any self funded bootstrapped enterprise needs. It also allows us to travel and work from wherever we’re at. We had a lot of fun at our ICO Fest in Ranchi, India which took place in November and December 2017. Here is a promotional video we created to say, “Hello Ranchi”:
8
Ranchi Mall is an exploration. Bitcoins, Blockchains and Cryptocurrencies are absolutely new to the world. We are still discovering their powers. Therefore, we have to be open and flexible. We cannot fix foot ourselves in any defined business model. We have to learn as we go. We have to make small and safe, but bold experiments. And once we are sure, we can dive in and make big moves. Guidance is not easy to come by. But we do have inspiration.
Here is a list of some people who have inspired us:
9
We had to do a lot of experiments before we could create a product which could make us feel great. We called those experiments candidate products. One of such candidate products was Steve Jobs Experiences. We created experiences that sought to find harmony between arts and sciences as Steve Jobs would have done. One of such Steve Jobs Experiences was done in McLeodganj, India in May 2016. The topic was Arts and Investments. We created a five part learning series on key principles of Investments as a result. We love it.
Art and Investments-Part 1: How to live off just from investments 24th May, 2016. McLeodganj
Art and Investments-Part 2: Long term Compounding rates of different assets
Art and Investments-Part 3: Short term investment strategies
Art and Investments-Part 4: Selection, The most important investment decision
Art and Investments-Part 5: Expense side of Investments
10
One of our candidate products we were very excited about earlier was “Video from Mobiles.” We are an eCommerce company. Our market is the general internet population of the world. For a time it looked like we might put our focus on this candidate product. Then we discovered Bitcoins and Blockchains. We still want to do develop this idea but maybe now we will take it on as a Blockchain Contract. In August 2016, we published the candidate product proposal for Video from Mobiles. That proposal is here:
11
A basic introduction to Ranchi Mall is available in this television interview which was recorded during Ranchi Mall ICO Fest in December 2017 (In Hindi mostly):
12
Ranchi Mall has made a lot of progress. But sometimes it makes sense to know how it looked in past. Here is one status report we created in June 2016. And these were issues we were thinking about in April 2016:
13
We are a firm believer of being financially viable from the start. We made sure we never overspent. We always made profits right from year one. This is a habit we plan to hold forever. Even though we have taken time to reach here, we have done so in order to maintain our viability and stability. We are firm believers in bootstrapping our business. Here are the slides of a talk that the Founder of Ranchi Mall gave at an event organised to help young women become entrepreneurs. The key message given was the importance of bootstrapping your business. The talk was also recorded on video. But you have to see the slides first to make sense:
14
We are doing a lot of work on blockchain and Blockchain Contracts. Here is an introduction on Blockchain Contracts:
We are also doing a lot of work on the Flo Blockchain Contract. You can find details here:
15
Another Blockchain Contract which is making news for us is the Startup Blockchain Contract. We fund promising startups, and in return, reserve the right to invest in them. This contract is easier on the startups than venture capital. It is also profitable for Ranchi Mall. We made some Facebook live videos when we funded the first startup under this blockchain contract:
Startup Blockchain Contract Live Video 1 https://m.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=1486436384725771&id=100000782710853&_rdr
Startup Blockchain Contract Video 2 https://m.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=1487264907976252&id=100000782710853&_rdr
Startup Blockchain Contract Video 3 https://m.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=1504559849580091&id=100000782710853&_rdr
16
And the startup blockchain contract has gotten us some media coverage:
17
All of these above will give you a gentle introduction to Ranchi Mall. We will keep on updating this page.
