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CoinSwitch Kuber, a fast-growing crypto asset platform, said it has 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 creating a crypto economy and operates one of the world’s largest crypto exchanges. This investment makes Bengaluru-based CoinSwitch Kuber, 30th unicorn and the most valuable crypto company in India valued at $1.9 billion. It has become the second crypto unicorn in India and is now valued higher than CoinDCX’s $1.1 billion valuation announced in August this year.
“The CoinSwitch Kuber 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, CoinSwitch Kuber.
“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.”
CoinSwitch Kuber will utilise the funds for onboarding 50 million Indians on the CoinSwitch Kuber platform and the introduction of new crypto products. Its primary goal is to make crypto a household name, thereby continuing to dominate the retail crypto market in India. The firm plans to achieve this through the launch of new crypto products and services such as lending, staking among others, to enable users to benefit the most out of this decentralised technology.
“CoinSwitch Kuber 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.”
CoinSwitch Kuber also aims 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 simplifying the investment journey of Indians. In the process, it would offer multiple avenues of investment for them through different 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 growing interest amongst institutions to enter the crypto market and CoinSwitch Kuber intends to tap into this opportunity. The firm will facilitate institutional investments by offering them a unique product that serves their end-to-end requirements.
India has a huge talent pool that can build world-class products and protocols in crypto. Currently, a strong support system to back these brilliant minds at work is lacking. As the biggest crypto company in India, CoinSwitch Kuber will be setting up an ecosystem fund to identify and enable the budding 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 a nascent stage and there isn’t enough awareness around it. The firm will utilise these funds to create a knowledge-driven crypto ecosystem in India. It would provide holistic crypto education to investors, both current and prospective, thus, helping them navigate the market and understand multiple facets of this new asset class.
Started in 2017 by Ashish Singhal, Govind Soni, and Vimal Sagar, CoinSwitch was launched as a global aggregator of crypto exchanges. The company launched its India operations in June 2020. CoinSwitch Kuber’s previous investors include Paradigm, Ribbit Capital, Sequoia Capital India and Tiger Global along with notable angel investors like Kunal Shah. CoinSwitch Kuber has over 10 million users in India with a monthly active user base of over seven million.
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