India has its second crypto unicorn in less than two months. Belgium-based CoinSwitch Kuber announced on Wednesday a more than $ 260 million Series C funding round led by American venture capital company a16z (Andreesen Horowitz) and Coinbase Ventures.
The investment makes CoinSwitch the 30th unicorn startup in India, valued at $ 1.9 billion, up from the $ 1.1 billion announced by CoinDCX in August. Coinbase Ventures was also part of the most recent CoinDCX funding round.
The old investors Paradigm, Ribbit Capital, Sequoia Capital and Tiger Global also took part in the CoinSwitch round.
The cryptocurrency exchange was founded in 2017 as a global aggregator of cryptocurrency exchanges by Ashish Singhal, who has worked at Amazon and Microsoft in the past and is the CEO of CoinSwitch. Govind Soni and Vimal Sagar are co-founders and hold the positions of Chief Technology Officer and COO, respectively.
The exchange began operations in India in June 2020, with an emphasis on simplifying crypto investments and ordering groceries online, and the newly acquired funds will be used to create new asset classes, according to Singhal.
“These would be standard asset classes that you see in the market that have nothing to do with cryptocurrencies,” he said. “Many of the people who invest with us are under the age of 28 and are first-time investors who have not invested in assets other than cryptocurrencies. These users will want to grow with us as a platform, get rid of the volatility of cryptocurrencies and ultimately have a balanced portfolio in the face of extreme volatility. ”
The new asset classes will not allow investors to use cryptocurrencies to buy traditional assets, but will be used in conjunction with the regular crypto exchanges and allow users to use fiat currencies. Singhal said plans to build that side of the business are well underway now.The company expects that its new products and services will help grow its user base from 10 million now to 50 million.
You also want to increase the setting. Singhal said the company is looking to hire tech, product, data and even compliance experts in addition to hiring executives to deal with the current regulatory landscape. He said the company could look for talent overseas even.
On the regulatory front, Singhal said it was “really positive”. “The tonality of the finance minister and other people who regulate cryptocurrencies has really changed. They send clear statements that they will not close down cryptocurrencies. We also saw lawmakers asking experts how to regulate the crypto space. This funding, because of the involvement of investors like a16z, who have never invested in India before, will also build trust with regulators, “he said.
CoinSwitch Kuber will also launch a new ecosystem fund that aims to invest in other crypto and blockchain companies to invest in India. “The first agenda is to identify companies that are solving problems for India using blockchain,” he said. The fund will also be used to raise awareness of cryptocurrencies and make strategic investments that could help the platform build their own business.
