Zoniqx co-founder and CBO, Sanjeev Birari, spoke to Genzio Media House during Paris Blockchain Week. Read on to see Sanjeev unpack real world asset tokenization and showcase Zoniqx’s leadership in the evolving narrative on real world assets. Here are some excerpts from the interview. Watch the full interview here.
Evan: Ladies and gentlemen, this is Evan at the Genzio Media House in Paris. Today, I am joined by Sanjeev, the co-founder and Chief Business Officer of Zoniqx, previously Tassets. Sanjeev, thank you so much for joining us today.
Sanjeev: Thank you so much for having me, Evan.
Evan: Sure, so how are you liking Paris so far? What brings you out here?
Sanjeev: Paris is a great city. First, everybody enjoys Paris. So we've come here to attend XRPL's event where I was speaking at the XRP Ripple's partner founder’s Summit. And after the summit it's Paris Blockchain Week, it’s one of the biggest events in Europe.
Evan: Yeah certainly. What was your speech about there?
Sanjeev: So we were talking about our experiences in terms of using XRP as a ledger, because we as a tech infrastructure company in the real world asset tokenization space, we are integrating with XRP Ledger to issue real world asset tokenization on XRP Ledger. So that's one of the reasons that this particular event was talking more about getting the founders and partners of XRP ecosystem together just to talk about the experiences and to improve the product with XRP.
Evan: Well, sounds very fruitful. Where is Zoniqx based out of?
Sanjeev: Zoniqx is based out of Silicon Valley in California. We are actually a Menlo Park based office, and we live there. So that's basically where Zoniqx was initiated, in Silicon Valley.
Evan: Very cool. So why don't you kind of dig into the Zoniqx pitch? What do you guys do? What brought you the idea and where are you looking to go?
Sanjeev: So Zoniqx was previously Tassets, as in tokenization of assets. We recently changed the name to Zoniqx. Zoniqx is a tech infrastructure company for real world asset tokenization and we offer end-to-end tokenization asset lifecycle management solutions. In simple terms, what that means is that we help institutions to put real world assets, whether they are liquid or illiquid assets, on blockchain within 48 hours. When we say 48 hours, it is basically the time within which we build the whole tech infrastructure, which enables any institution or issuer to use tokenization as their medium to raise capital or to put the assets on chain to tokenize their assets. Our product used for this is called TPaaS, which stands for tokenization platform as a service.
Evan: Very interesting. It surprises me that this company is based out of Silicon Valley. I'm curious, have there been any regulatory headaches that you've had to deal with with the prospect of this company?
Sanjeev: We are a tech infrastructure provider, right? So we built our proprietary product, which is a product for our issuers. So we don't have to take any licenses because the tech that we built is for our issuers. They are going to be using it, so they need to have the regulatory and compliance in place because they are the ones who are using the tech and issuing securities in the form of tokens, which is security token offering. So we don't have to worry about compliances in this space because we are a tech infrastructure and tech solution provider.
Evan: Okay. Yeah, it makes a lot of sense. Now, is the product live? Do you have clients right now?
Sanjeev: Oh yeah, we've been in this space since 2017. So you can call us the OG's in this space because we started way back. The company has been there since 2017, we had been working on building the whole tech infrastructure for real world asset tokenization. We launched our first offering with a client, which was our first validation, in the last quarter of 2021, and since then we've been in this space. We have almost $4.5 billion of assets tokenized, and we have tokenized various different asset classes.
Evan: Yeah, very cool. Now what asset class would you say you've seen the most interest from?
Sanjeev: If I have to just zero in on one, it's very difficult. The reason is that we are a tech infrastructure company and we are asset agnostic, so we can actually tokenize any asset. Let’s say if a bank wants to put a token of bank deposits on chain, they use our platform, or you’re a commercial real estate company building something in Champs-Élysées and you want to use that debt offering on chain to raise capital to build the tower or office or retail outlet, you can use the service. So just to be very specific in answering your question, there are two types of asset classes, liquid and illiquid. Among liquid assets, there are treasuries, which is like bank products. We see a lot happening with liquid assets which is typically, for example, banks coming for bond tokenization or treasuries or notes for that matter. And at the same time, among illiquid assets, there's more demand from commercial real estate and residential real estate where they would like to tokenize the portfolio of real estate assets whether it's a debt or an equity. So there's a lot of demand, and after BlackRock tokenized their first liquidity fund, this has been more in news, and most of these institutions now really want to make this thing happen, so there's a lot happening in this space.
Evan: Sure. Now what would you say are some of the main benefits that let's say potential client that are looking to onboard their assets on chain would receive from doing so?
Sanjeev: There are a lot of benefits in terms of cross border processes. I want to elaborate on the very specific benefit of tokenization, which absolutely is all about the creation of liquidity. Say, you as an investor have $10,000 in spare and want to invest the money. Would you mind investing in a retail outlet on Champs-Élysées, a $1,000 where you can own that asset and get some kind of rental returns, which they are issuing from there? Or probably in Burj Khalifa or Salesforce Tower in San Francisco? You can actually own all of these by putting say $1,000 in each out of those $10,000, and the rest you could probably put in some government bonds issued on chain. So you can diversify your investments and it's all about liquidity. So, that's one of the major benefits of tokenization, that you're going to be fractionalizing large investments, so the entry barrier is less for an investor and they can now buy a good quality asset by spending only a $1,000 or $10,000, which is a fraction of all the best of the best assets which are available on chain.
Evan: Sure. Yeah, very interesting, I certainly see the value there. I think that lowering the barrier is huge, that's certainly a major benefit of bringing those real life assets on chain and I'm sure you've felt the recent influx of the RAW narrative, right? The real world asset narrative has really picked up steam and it seems like you guys are very well poised to take full advantage of that narrative, so that's awesome for you guys. Glad that you've been around and built through, been a bearer, and stuck through, and I'm sure that's starting to pay off, so it's cool to see. So you're in Paris right now. Are you going to be attending any further events in the near future?
Sanjeev: So Paris blockchain week is going to end tomorrow, I believe. So that's all because I've been here since Monday now, so I've attended various events, and today there are going to be a lot of side events as well. So I'm going to be attending those. And then tomorrow is the last day out here.
Evan: Sure, awesome. Well is there anything else that you would like to share here?
Sanjeev: There's a lot happening in the RWA space and Zoniqx being a very early adopter in this space, we have built something which is where the issuers don't have to know anything about the technology because it's so user friendly, it's a robust technology for you to put any asset on chain in literally 48 hours. So yeah please go and visit our website at www.zoniqx.com and reach out to us. We definitely would like to hear more thoughts on what you want to see about real world assets, because there's a lot trending these days on RWA.
Evan: Certainly, now we've got your website, are there any social handles that our viewers should watch out for?
Sanjeev: Yeah, we have our LinkedIn page and then of course we have our X, which is @zoniqxinc. You can just follow us, would love see more interactive sessions on our X handle as well, and we are always looking for feedback in terms of the users, what exactly they think about this space.
Evan: Awesome! Well, thank you so much for joining us Sanjeev. It’s amazing what you guys are doing. I've seen a couple of companies that have been in the RWA space for a while and are really being able to reap the rewards of the influx of this narrative. It's definitely good to hear from people who have been doing it for a while because of the value not because of the hype. So kudos to you guys, hope that it's working. Thanks again for joining us, hope that you enjoy your last two days in Paris.
Sanjeev: Thank you for having me.
About Zoniqx
Zoniqx ("Zoh-nicks") is a global fintech leader headquartered in Silicon Valley, specializing in converting real-world assets into security tokens. It offers an interoperable, compliant infrastructure for the RWA tokenization market, enabling global liquidity and DeFi integration through its end-to-end ecosystem of SDKs and APIs. Zoniqx pioneers on-chain, fully automated RWA deployment on public, private, and hybrid chains.
Connect with Zoniqx
For financial institutions interested in exploring or enhancing their capabilities in blockchain and tokenization, Zoniqx offers a powerful and versatile suite of solutions that streamline the tokenization process. You can tokenize any asset, and Zoniqx offers a secure, compliant, and interoperable solution tailored to meet your needs. To learn more about how Zoniqx can help your organization unlock the potential of tokenized assets, or to discuss potential partnerships and collaborations, please visit our contact page 👉https://www.zoniqx.com/contact.