Senior Vice President of Product for Ripple, Asheesh Birla, recently attended and spoke at a panel that was hosted by the Wharton School of Business. His main topic of discussion was regarding the recent acquisition of 50% of the Indian crypto industry, which he says is a step that will “plant its root in the world economy.”

According to Birla, Ripple presently maintains 60% of the XRP supply, though they are working to partner with additional financial institutions. With the right plan, they aim to convince multiple institutions in India to join the RippleNet. This network is filled with other providers that are willing to accept Ripple tokens as payment, which would help spread it around the world.

At the panel, Birla essentially headed up the discussion on Scaling and Digital Disruption in Fintech, talking about the potential two billion customers in India alone. The discussion gradually led to Ripple’s ability to serve such a high volume of investors. He threw out a few ideas, saying,

“How do you get two billion people onto Ripple? Do we give the currency away to every Indian, that’s like two billion – just give it away?”

Birla brought up the idea of speaking to the top three banks in the country, which would bring them a substantial market share of 80%. However, Ripple needs to consider ongoing progress, he pointed out. He said,

“And so we realized in the next five years, one billion people will become banked in India, but they’ll be banked through their phone. So, then we started targeting mobile phone providers and telcos.” Since they have already acted on these ideas, he added, “And so now, I think that in our pipeline we have probably 50% of the market in India, either integrated onto Ripple or in the deal, in the sort of pipeline to be signed to India. And guess what, we’re going to take that back to Wells Fargo, and we’re going to say, ‘there’s not a better way to send into India than Ripple.’”

After making these beginning changes to their work with India, Birla stressed how much Ripple has managed to scale, even throwing in how they have an average of at least one deal a week with sales. In reference to selling to these financial institutions, he implied that it was not exactly enjoyable. However, he added,

“Now, in 2018 … where the entire inertia was ‘disrupt banks,’ we’re going in and working with them.”

In the blog that the XRP community hosts, there has been plenty of discussion about Ripple’s commitment to working within India’s economy. One of the major concerns comes with the regulatory measures being made at the Reserve Bank of India. However, the discussion that Birla had at the Wharton School shows that RippleNet has a firm grasp on the way that they are integrating themselves globally and with RBI.

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