CoinSwitchKuber, a fast-growing crypto asset platform, declared it had closed a $260 million Series C funding round from Andreessen Horowitz (a16z), Coinbase Ventures and existing investors Paradigm, Ribbit Capital, Sequoia Capital India and Tiger Global.
Coinbase is one of the early pioneers of building a crypto economy and serves one of the world’s largest crypto exchanges. This investment addresses Bengaluru-based CoinSwitchKuber, the 30th unicorn and the most worthy crypto company in India, valued at $1.9 billion. It has become the second crypto unicorn in India. Presently, it is evaluated higher than CoinDCX’s $1.1 billion valuations declared in August this year.
“The CoinSwitchKuber team has worked round the clock to be the most preferred platform for crypto investors in India. This has helped us to reach the unicorn status in just over 14 months of operations in India,” said Ashish Singhal, co-founder and CEO, CoinSwitchKuber.
“Over the last one year, our focus has been to develop a robust product for Indian consumers. Now with this funding, we hope to propel ourselves further on our mission to bring crypto to every household in India.”
CoinSwitchKuber will deploy the funds to onboard 50 million Indians on the CoinSwitchKuber platform and propose new crypto products. Its primary intention is to make crypto a household name, thereby governing the retail crypto market in India. The firm intends to accomplish this by launching new crypto products and services such as lending, staking among others, to empower users to benefit the most from this decentralised technology.
“CoinSwitchKuber is on a mission to build wealth for Indians by making crypto more accessible,” said Singhal. “I believe simplifying crypto investments for the Indian youth has helped us to stand out.”
CoinSwitchKuber also endeavours to acquire the best talent, including leaders and experts across engineering, product, data and growth, to define the crypto industry in India. The company plans to design ways of interpreting the investment journey of Indians. The process would contribute multiple avenues of investment for them through various products and asset classes.
“We wanted to remove all the complexities in crypto trading, educate consumers and give them a simplified experience of one-click buy and sell in crypto,” said Singhal.
There is also a thriving interest amongst institutions to enter the crypto market. CoinSwitchKuber expects to tap into this opportunity. The firm will promote institutional investments by proposing to them a unique product that serves their end-to-end requirements.
India has a widespread talent pool that can mount world-class products and protocols in crypto. Currently, a robust support system to back these intelligent minds at work is lacking. As the most leading crypto company in India, CoinSwitchKuber will establish an ecosystem fund to classify and empower the growing talent in the country.
“We are incredibly excited about the crypto market opportunity in India, and with its breakout growth, CoinSwitch has emerged as the leading retail platform in the country,” said David George, General Partner at Andreessen Horowitz. “Ashish (Singhal) and the team have demonstrated strong execution abilities and the ambition to deliver an investment platform for the masses in India.”
Crypto is still at an emerging stage, and there isn’t sufficient awareness encompassing it. The firm will utilise these funds to construct a knowledge-driven crypto ecosystem in India. It would render a holistic crypto education to current and prospective investors, thus assisting them to navigate the market and surmise multiple aspects of this new asset class.
In 2017 by Ashish Singhal, GovindSoni, and VimalSagar, CoinSwitch was propelled as a global aggregator of crypto exchanges. The company launched its India operations in June 2020. CoinSwitchKuber’s early investors include Paradigm, Ribbit Capital, Sequoia Capital India and Tiger Global, and notable angel investors like Kunal Shah. CoinSwitchKuber has over 10 million users in India, with over seven million monthly active user bases.
