Recap of Telegram AMA between FOHOCOIN and BITBNS.
Time : 3:30 PM UTC
Roshan D’silva and Vijay Thomas, Co-Founders of FOHO Holdings attended the AMA along with host Vaibhav Seth.
FOHO allows sharing of real estate using blockchain. In short, FOHO is building the future of shared real estate.
The transcript is almost entirely in its original AMA form, mildly edited for punctuation and readability only, and is subject to the disclaimer located at the bottom of the page.
There were four segments:
1. Introduction of the guest and FOHO in bitbns group.
2. Twitter QnA round.
3. Community QnA round 1.
4. Community QnA round 2.
*** AMA begins ***
__INTRODUCTION OF THE GUEST & FOHO IN BITBNS GROUP__
Q1. Vaibhav Seth : Can you please give a brief information about your background?
Roshan D’silva :
Hi Everyone, I’m Roshan and along with Vijay, I am one of the founders of FOHO. I have been an entrepreneur for about 20 years now. I grew up overseas in the tiny country of Qatar - before moving to India in 1996 to study at IIT Bombay -from where I graduated. I love real estate - after many years in the software world, you realise how difficult it is to create something that is functional, beautiful and makes people’s lives better - especially if a mistake cannot be corrected by a line of code or an eraser tool on paint. I have been very actively involved in the world of international real estate (due to my role for the last 10 years as the founder of Tripvillas)- and to a certain extent with real estate in India - where I have built and manage a family portfolio of residential apartments, land and plantations.
Vijay Thomas :
Hello Folks, this is Vijay and I am one of the founders of Foho. I started Foho in 2019 as a pure play fractional ownership business in Goa and now we have embraced Blockchain and have got Tripvillas and Roshan to join us and we are very excited about how FohoCoin can bring together Crypto, Technology and Real Estate.I am also the founder and CEO of Tangentia(www.tangentia.com) a global technology consulting business with operations in Canada, USA and India
Vaibhav Seth : Can you please provide link to tripvillas website so that user’s can explore details about FOHO’s partner platform?
Roshan D’silva:
yeah absolutely, whats Real Estate talk without some visuals - so here is a video of the most recent creation - we opened this complex about 2 months ago - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n4H6Rzflg64
This one last year in December - which is the largest hospitality asset in Goa - built in partnership with Tata Housing - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mAJD95YMscE
Vijay Thomas:
The FOHO coin website is :-
https://fohocoin.com/
https://www.tripvillas.com/
Q2. Vaibhav Seth : So, FOHO’s partner platform already have done big partnerships like Tata housing!This can be the next big thing in crypto world. Perfect, Lets move to second question, Please tell us more about implementation of FOHO in the real estate market? You have multiple products such as FOHO.haus, FOHO.work and FOHO.club. How will all of these products incentivise FOHO holders?
Vijay Thomas:
Foho will initially be piloted in India, Canada and SriLanka and will move globally to various geographies - the details are in the white paper. Absolutely we are talking to the big builders in Canada, India and Sri Lanka first but have also got interest from developers in Dubai, USA, Mauritius, Vietnam and even Australia. So imagine a building being built in Mumbai with 50 floors and the builder puts 5 floors on the Foho platform only for fractional buyers.
Roshan D’silva:
Absolutely. The world of international real estate is exciting - and today many countries whose economy was very tourism dependent are going all out to attract investors. We expect that the community on Foho will be able to bargain hard and get great deals.
Q3. Vaibhav Seth : Fractional buyers, So it will be basically like owning a fraction of property through cryptocurrency (FOHO) holdings or something else?How will it exactly work for retail investors?
Roshan D’silva:
In general Foho coin holders can take a more active role where they help in scouting for deals, performing due diligence on proposals and recruiting others to participate in deals or clubs - thus earning more foho coins. Or else they can take a more passive role where a large percentage of the platform fees across all product lines go towards buying back and airdrops to all Foho coin holders. People who have strong connections or an ability to uncover deals can also become deal sponsors and make 2% of the transaction value - we expect multiple will run their own businesses in parts of the world where they have proprietary knowledge or are on the ground to find and due diligence opportunities. So in Foho.club - I’m personally very keen to recruit someone who is an insider in the wine world who can help me and my friends tie up a club which can buy all the production from a great vineyard which we can then enjoy and maybe also have names of all the club members on the label etc.
Vijay Thomas :
The Foho.Haus will be the blockchain based residential real estate marketplace
Foho.work will be the Blockchain based commercial real estate marketplace
Foho.Club is a marketplace for users to share rental real estate and experiences
Q4 : Vaibhav Seth: Alright so users from which countries can get benefit from foho.haus ecosystem?
Vijay Thomas :
Foho.haus It is going to be global in nature and every property will have its own requirements for purchase so there will be a whitelisting process for each property. Example if there is a property listed in Kashmir, only people eligible to buy property in Kashmir will get whitelisted to buy fractions in that property. However what people should realize is that most of the world is open for purchase and you can easily buy properties worldwide with a few exceptions. An example for Foho.Haus
If you want to own a fraction of a residential property, you could do so at FOHO.haus. Imagine for $10,000 which will not even get you a broom closet in Toronto or New York, you could own a fraction or a condo on 5th Ave New York, a fraction of a Villa in Goa, India, a fraction of a seaside apartment in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam and a fraction of a Ski Chalet in Whistler, BC. An example for Foho.work
If you want to own a fraction of the commercial property, you could do so at foho.work Imagine for $50,000 which will not even get you a 10x10 ft office in Mumbai, you could own a fraction of an office space on Wall Street, a fractional ownership in a Brewery in Amsterdam, part of a data centre in Nairobi and a fraction of a warehouse in Plano,Texas.
Roshan D’silva:
So in Foho.club - I’m personally very keen to recruit someone who is an insider in the wine world who can help me and my friends tie up a club which can buy all the production from a great vineyard which we can then enjoy and maybe also have names of all the club members on the label etc. Vaibhav instead of setting up a vineyard in foho.club - the club is just a year in tenure - so we want to have someone who really knows wine and can negotiate with existing boutique vineyards to buy their entire production for a year for the members and then we setup the club and get enough members. Maybe we try a different vineyard each year to make things interesting 😉
Q5 : Vaibhav Seth : Perfect, Overall product looks solid. Can you please provide link to FOHO website and whitepaper so that our group members can explore it in brief to prepare for community QnA round
Roshan D’silva:
The FOGO coin website is https://fohocoin.com/
Whitepaper is there on the top right of the website. Click here
__TWITTER ROUND__
Q1 :Question by nishchaysm
How is #FOHO different from other digital currencies? What is the vision behind FOHOCOIN? Despite of government’s intervention in crypto market how @fohocoin is going to build trust among the crypto investors?
Roshan D’silva: So - as opposed to other Digital currencies - Foho is unique (I think) in essentially being linked closely to a hard asset like real estate. What that means is that foho coin holders can at any point use their coins to do things in the real world - to buy a full home or a fraction of a home or else to book a holiday and stay in a vacation home or to pay for their office. I think governments around the world will realise that blockchain has some real innovations built into it - and they will be able to put in some regulation but over regulation will kill this golden goose. In many countries, as I mentioned, Corona has badly affected the economy - so we are already getting a red carpet welcome from the governments as they welcome any and every form of investment coming into the country - as it creates jobs, creates beautiful things and eventually enriches their economy. So we feel most if not all countries will welcome Foho - as we help in moving the trillions of dollars today in the crypto world - into their economy and into hard assets.
Vijay Thomas: The vision behind @fohocoin is to be able to allow users the ability to participate in the FOHO ecosystem and allow users to participate in the global real estate fractional sharing and owning economy based on a blockchain based platform. So we want the FOHO platform to be the primary place for people to go to if they wanted to either participate in a group that is sharing a rental ( imagine a group of companies renting space in Bangalore and sharing the space and rental via FOHO.club or a bunch of investors getting together and buying a cell phone tower in Tamil Nadu that they they rent to Reliance Jio and share the profits) …..the possibilities are endless
Q2 : Question by @Ballu19871
What is marketing/promotion strategies and how much portion is allocated for the same?What is the max supply?Any buyback or token burn in place?Plan for listing on more exchanges?
Roshan D’silva: We’ve allocated a little above 50% of our IEO funds to marketing, sales and advertising etc. We see this as a network business and the faster that we are able to attract both the best sellers, a large number of buyers and other real estate industry participants - brokers, lenders etc. to the platform, the more successful we will be. We’re usuing all the usual strategies - from viral marketing, to social, to digital and affiliate marketing as well as doing cross promotions on listings websites where real estate investors lurk at the moment. We may also do a smaller amount of brand campaigns on youtube etc. We have a buyback policy in place. We may decide in some cases in the interest of the community to buyback and burn and in other cases to recycle the coins back into the ecosystem. To see more on both the burn as well as the airdrop policy - I would think those interested in one, should be interested in the other - please see the relevant sections in our whitepaper.
Vijay Thomas: The max supply is 1 Billion Foho coins a d all the details are in the White paper. We do plan on listing on more exchanges in the near future and Bitbns is our very first offering and glad to be here
Q3. By @Rdrahuldubey
How will foho mitigate the risk of fraud? What kind of properties will be listed? What will be the selection criteria for the property to be listed? How does a user validate the information about the property or it will be done by FOHO?
Vijay Thomas: 25% of revenue from the Foho Ecosystem will go to Buybacks of FOHO coins and redistribute to token holders. Roshan is the expert on the property validation but I can say that between the management team, we have bought and sold so much real estate globally that we have a very good understanding of the marketplace and the players and we have safeguards in place including minimum levels of staking and payment by the sponsors for each property to ensure that fraudulent transactions are prevented. We will have a proper legal review before a sponsored property actually goes live for purchase. Also I had somebody send me a question directly about valuation of properties - this will be market driven. If there are 2 identical properties in Hiranandani in Powai on Foho.Haus and one is cheaper than the other then the cheaper one should get more interest. We will be the platform that allows the fractional marketplace for real estate to be simplified and scaled to a global scale
Roshan: Thats a great question Rahul - me and Vijay and our team spent many many days designing an ecosystem where we could weed out fraudsters - we have multiple measures that we hope will make it financially very very difficult - for a fraudster - and even if they manage to put that much skin in the game, we still have rights to block their withdrawals - To give you a sense - every deal on the Foho.haus and Foho.work ecosystem needs sponsorship by a sponsor who agrees to put in 10% of the value of the entire deal and remain locked into the investment for a year. In addition, his investment thesis has to be made public and can be challenged by market participants. In general, we want the platform to operate in a decentralised and fairly democratic manner - as such, we will step in rarely and only if we strongly feel something feels or smells odd. We expect that mostly the properties that users will like to see will be completed properties, generating significant income on a %age basis > 6% at least and with strong prospects for the future due to infrastructure or the location becoming fashionable very rapidly. We ourselves are not excited about under construction properties or yet another most beautiful most luxurious, most fantastic 800 sq. feet 3bhk apartment in a 1000 apartment complex in the middle of an urban jungle. Once the property goes live, any user can comment, assist in the due diligence or challenge assumptions - so for instance if the user finds a deal for the identical apartment cheaper, they can just launch an alternate deal and I doubt anyone would participate in the higher priced deal - so we expect the platform will shift everyone to the better deal.
Q4. Question by @Nikhil77207572
FOHO ecosystem is pretty strong and I love the way FOHO team have designed it to be more user-friendly!does foho token’s fluctuations in price affect the real estate and properties it’s involved with?
Roshan : Great Question Nikhil- Not really. For the sellers, the transactions are still priced in the currency of their choice. However, yes for the Fohocoin holders - they may benefit or get hurt by variations in the price of the Foho coin - so for instance if the price of the foho coin appreciates Vs. the US Dollar - they actually have to spend much lesser of their Foho coins to buy the property or their fraction as compared to others who might buy immediately. Our endeavour will be to strike a balance - between rewarding the early users who reposed faith in the Foho ecosystem and in many ways helped build it and a very rapid increase in price which may make transactions very expenisve
Vijay Thomas: I just got another question about how we came up with the FOHO name - well FOHO is an acronym for Fraction Ownership Home ( FOHO)
Q5. By @S_r_shadabalam
What are the legal and regulatory guidelines, and how will the organization monitor emerging regulatory considerations?
Vijay Thomas: Regulatory for us is 2 pronged - crypto regulations and real estate regulations. The Crypto is a national subject and since we are an utility token, we are not as affected but we definitely are on the watch for changing regulations and also some of our global footprint will help us diversify some of this risk. The real estate aspect is actually a state subject or a province subject in most countries and this requires us to have legal teams in most states and provinces we will operate in - this is similar to what Uber or Airbnb had to do in their global rollout
Roshan D’silva: Real estate has many regulatory guidelines depending on the class of real estate and local zoning etc. We expect to adhere to all though obviously we will prioritise countries with a simpler and more investor friendly legal system. So for instance in India, we may prioritise Plantations which allow FDI - Vs. Agricultural land which have very stringent norms on who can invest etc. To monitor these norms, we have an in house team - we also will draw on the expertise of the wider teams in Tripvillas and Tangentia - to give a flavour - Tripvillas owns Holiday Home Times -www.holidayhometimes.com - which has nearly a decade of research and data on the laws and guidelines for real estate in most hotspots across the globe. Do check them out when you have the time.
__COMMUNITY QUESTION ROUND 1__
Question 1 by @ Vishal Srivastava
At what price, FOHO coin will be listed at bitbns and when…?
Vijay Thomas : Our IEO will open on July 27th and the price will be 0.1 USDT per FOHO coin and the minimum purchase is 100 FOHO coins or 10 USDT
Question 2 by @ Killua Zodylck
Everyone knows, if you want to go fast, go alone, but if you want to go far, you go with your partners, so with Your Project which partners will promote and help Your Project reach and achieve the project’s goals?
Roshan D’silva : We’ve already talked about our partnership with the exchange you all are members off and with Tripvillas — over the next few days we will unveil multiple other partnerships with influential players in the global real estate space.
Absolutely. You’re seeing one of our first partnerships go live here with Bitbns — we’ve already talked about the importance of our partnership with Tripvillas — we will be announcing many more over the next few days with other influential entities in the real estate and property management space.
Question 3 by @ Kaushal Pohekar
how can a traveller use foho at places and what places or facilities already support foho ?how can we own fraction of a property.
Vijay Thomas : Travellers could use FOHO coins within the FOHO ecosystem to book properties on FOHO.club but also via our partners like Tripvillas.com .
In sometime, we think even places like Expedia or AirBnb could use FOHOCoin as some of our properties and clubs could also be listed on their platforms.
Question 4 by @ Misbabul Hassan
1.As it is regarding real estate is it advantageous for real estate market in digital platform?
2.What is it’s Smart Contract?3.What is it total supply?
3.Can we see a burn of coin in future
4.What projects are you working on?
5.present a suitable reason to invest in it?
And yeah have seen you work closely a great effort,Appreciate it ❤️
Thanks for @bitbns for being such a smooth and best platform for crypto trading. It’s the best exchange I have been using so far for a long time ❤️
Roshan D’silva :
1. For any currency to have true utility you have to be able to buy things with it and the basic stuff as they say in India is roti, Kapda and Makaan. As people get wealthier obviously only a limited amount that can be spent on rotis and kapda — so makaan or real estate will take the lion share. 2&3 I think are covered in the white paper . You can have a look there.
4. We are working on deals in India, Canada and Sri Lanka in the pilot phase. We have got of course inbound interest from many other countries — which we are studying and will come on the platform after We see initial success with the pilot.
Question 5 by @ Gyani Youtuber Rohit
How is it beneficial and trustable for real estate Over other coins in market?
-And on wt platform (Blockchain) it is devehloped?
- How Foho coin will help retail investor in Creating wealth,can we earn interest on it by simply holding,and wt abt its staking?? @bitbns @foho_coin
WHEN IT WILL LAUNCH on bitbns exchange ?
Vijay Thomas: It is developed on Ethereum and you can create wealth by simply holding possibly lending FOHO coin to a market participant that needs the coin. We will also have financial Intermediaries that can participate in the platform.
Question 6 by @ Crypto Boss
Q1- Who are the investors in the project? Will there be any lock-in period for investors ?
Q2-Will there be any minimum purchase of FOHO for a trader ? In the future , if FOHO is declared as a legal tender , Will we able to invest in real estate via Foho Coin ?
Roshan D’silva : 1. Our investors are a mix of wealthy individuals, family offices and institutions — not to exclude of course me and Vijay ourselves. Investors are locked and get unlocked progressively over a year after the first 3 months. 2. For a trader in the IEO, minimum purchase is 10$. 3. We don’t anticipate we will be legal tender — we are not trying to replace a Fiat currency. However we anticipate many sellers will prefer to accept consideration in Foho coin for their own reasons and the inherent advantages it presents
Question 7 by @ Mital
“What do you expect from the #FOHO community? Please let us know what your wish is that we bring it to the maximum possible success”
Vijay Thomas : Can we expect the IEO to be oversubscribed.? We have very strong interest from private placement investors globally as well as many strategic investors. So please help spread the word around and participate with your wallets when the IEO opens. Roshan and I can can assure you that it will be fantastic ride😊
Question 8 by @ Nervos Pickachoo
Your project sounds like Wework in some way… We know how it burst after becoming a huge bubble… Looking into it… What are the measures have you guys taken to prevent such mischief?
Roshan D’silva : I think I touched on this during an earlier question. We have tried to make it unviable to try and play around in the ecosystem. However we cannot rule out that people will be innovative and we will be very vigilant and will plug loopholes faster than fraudsters can withdraw large amounts.
Question 10 by @ Dinesh R
#FOHO
Why it’s named foho
Any particular reason for the name Or any back story
Vijay Thomas : Well the FOHO name — it is simple, FOHO is an acronym for Fraction Ownership Home ( FOHO). Hope you guys like it 😊
__COMMUNITY QUESTION ROUND2 __
Question by 11 by @ Siddhant Chowdhry
Q1) Are we Building Foho Coin Wallet for Staking of tokens ? What is the vision of the Foho Coin Founders ?
Q2- Since , it is being launched on @Bitbns , will we be getting Annualised returns on the holdings for Foho Coin ?
Q3- Who are the investors in the project? Will there be any lock-in period for investors ?
Q4-Will there be any minimum purchase of FOHO for a trader ? In the future , if FOHO is declared as a legal tender , Will we able to invest in real estate via Foho Coin ?
Roshan D’silva : We are studying how we can design a great mortgage product where you can lend your fohocoins to others who want to buy fractions of properties. All rent first comes to you — and if the value of the property falls or they defaul the system encashes the fraction and gets you your money back.
Question 12 by @ Cikuakk
Nowadays, Binance smart Chain blockchain is having high transaction speed and pretty low gas fees, Are you planning to launch your mainet or switch to other blockchains in the future?
Roshan D’silva: We are studying other side chains or L2 chains also for some transactions in the interest of speed and lower cost.
Question 13 by @ Akhil
While the xamples which u have quoted above are very fancy and looks impressive……With FOHO and launchonascent having alliance now which is primarily on BnSD platform, how do you foresee FOHO getting growing in near future leveraging BNSD as well?
Any future plans of having fohocoin launch on global exchanges and any exchanges shortlisted??
Vijay Thomas : We will definitely aim to have global coverage with exchanges and are in talks with many at the moment. Will also coincide with the geographies where we will launch FOHO.Haus , FOHO.club and FOHO.work
Question 14 by @ Rahul Kuhad
1) If I own FOHO coin, does it mean my coin is backed up with real physical land or in any Cloud base NFT or is it just a utility token ?
2) How does FOHO company or founders earns money / Make profits ?
3) Can FOHO be minned? Or new coins are generated through Staking ?
4) If I want to launch a startup , Can i use Foho.club as a fund raising platform ? Where i give fraction of company part to investors, So basically can fund raising or VC be a part of Foho.club ?
5) If i want to sell a land / apartment , How the process will take place on Foho platform & Do i need to make registration at my local front ( govt dept ) for each fractional buy ??
Roshan D’silva :
1. Not initially. We will launch an asset backed vault in t
he future.
2. Foho makes money through platform and software fees.
3. Cannot be mined. Staking exists — it is similar to a mortgage product as described above.
4. Sure. Remember you benefit by actually recruiting customers as the club members essentiallly upfront pay for your product. It’s also that way a great test for you as an entrepreneur if anyone really wants your product
Question 15 by @ Oxychamcial Potreaicx
How can the community contribute to the progress of Foho? Do you have a Governance model? Is there and ambassadors or bug bounty or contest we can assist in so as to enable further adoption?
Roshan D’silva : Yes — we have all the above. We’re releasing a structured program called the Foho army shortly. Stay tuned for that. We have something better coming, we will be launching the FOHO Army this weekend. So you can join the #FOHOArmy this weekend and want Brigadiers, Lieutenants, Majors and everybody in our army. We have to take over the world 😊
Question 16 by Killua Zodylck
Are you currently on track to reach all of your 2021 roadmap milestones and which stage are you most excited about?
Roshan D’silva: Yes we are. Personally most excited to unveil the great collection of opportunities and to see what great deals you in the community source. I’m expecting some great historic properties with a lot of character, history etc.
Question 17 by @ Dark
#FOHO
To what extent have the recent bear market have on the project development and how have you been able to survive this longest bear market and continue building and developing? Just love the #foho team 😊
Roshan D’silva: Not sure about bear market because while commercial properties have been negatively impacted, vacation properties have benefitted hugely from the COVID pandemic. Most people have realised this is a once in a lifetime opportunity to live and work from the beach or mountains etc and just living the dream. This has caused a spurt in people renting, buying holiday homes etc.
Question 18 by @ Sushanth Gupta
What are the transaction charges for FOHO #FOHO
Roshan D’silva: The transaction charges are mentioned in the white paper - they are a %age of the transaction for providing the fractional platform or the club management platform.
Question 19 by @ Misbabul Hassan
I have asked my question above but want to say FOHO a great initiative and Bitbns you’re angel for people like us
Who is providing such a smooth platform to invest easily and quickly
God bless you both ❤️
Roshan D’silva: Thank you. Appreciate the blessings. I think COVID has taught us all how important it is to have the best wishes of all around us. We wish you all who have attended the very best, good health and happiness to you and all loved ones. Stay safe !!
Question 20 by @ Amit Saki
Does management have an effective system in place to model, manage, and balance risks and opportunity cost?
Roshan D’silva: Yes - we have spent a lot of time designing the ecosystem - we will continue to focus resources on this area. Me and Vijay both feel it is key to success of the platform.
