BREAKING: WazirX CEO Nischal Shetty, co-founder Siddharth Menon shift base to Dubai

Nischal Shetty and Siddharth Menon, the co-founders of Indian cryptocurrency exchange, WazirX, have shifted their base to Dubai from India, multiple sources in the knowledge of the matter told Business Today. Sources said that Shetty and Menon have moved out of India with their families to Dubai, although WazirX still has an office in Mumbai and Bengaluru.  Sameer, Mhatre, the co-founder and Chief Technology Officer at WazirX, however, continues to operate from India, one of the sources said.

Currently 100 percent of workforce at WazirX are working remotely. 

Business Today has reached out to WazirX , Shetty and Menon for a comment. The story will be updated as and when they respond.

The development comes amidst Indian government imposing a 30 per cent tax on virtual digital assets in addition to 1 per cent tax deductible at the source (TDS), a move which has led to a significant drag in trading volumes on homegrown cryptocurrency exchanges. Furthermore, the government has clarified that no losses will be set off against profits on VDAs and crypto mining will also be liable to taxes, which has drawn severe criticism from the industry players.

Shetty has been vocal on social media platforms, including Twitter, hitting out at the Indian government's stance on crypto taxation saying that that the move will impact the homegrown players and lead to wealth drain from the country.

India's Enforcement Directorate (ED) in June, last year, had issued a showcause notice to Shetty for allegedly violating provisions of the Foreign Exchange Management Act, for cryptocurrency deals worth Rs 2,790.74 crore.

The WazirX CEO had said in an earlier statement that the crypto platform is in compliance with all applicable laws.

"We go beyond our legal obligations by following Know Your Customer (KYC) and Anti Money Laundering (AML) processes and have always provided information to law enforcement authorities whenever required," as per earlier statement from Shetty which was reported by BT.

Shetty had also announced his project Shardeum with US based crypto innnovator, Omar Sayed. Shardeum is a layer 1 blockchain project which will solve for scalability and higher transaction concerns around crypto tokens.

Notably, Dubai has turned out to be a hotspot for cryptocurrency innovators/ influencers after India imposed new tax regime on the crypto transactions. India's crypto/ web 3 start-ups have flocked to UAE, especially Dubai, where there are no income tax provisions and the government has formed a regulatory body for trading of virtual digital assets.