2021 has lifted the crypto industry to new heights and presented it with new challenges. While the market saw a meteoric rise in early 2021, attracting more and more people to put their hard earned money in it, the market has now gone through some fluctuations, and seems relatively calmer. Even then, the industry continues to grow and flourish. Today, CoinSwitch Kuber has become the second Indian crypto unicorn following a $260 million Series C funding round led by American venture capital firm a16z (Andreesen Horowitz) and Coinbase Ventures.
With this, its valuation has jumped by nearly four times to come to $1.9 billion as the Indian unicorn family welcomes its 30th member this year. The funding round also included participation from existing investors Paradigm, Ribbit Capital, Sequoia Capital, and Tiger Global. While Andreessen Horowitz invested $80 million, Coinbase Ventures pumped in $150 million, and the remainder was given by the others. This also marked the first investment from Andreessen Horowitz in an Indian start-up.
The four-year-old start-up, founded by Ashish Singhal, Govind Soni, and Vimal Sagar Tiwari as a global aggregator of cryptocurrency exchanges, said that the proceeds from the funding round would be utilized towards building up new asset classes (which would function alongside the regular crypto exchange and will allow users to use fiat currencies). It also plans to expand its user base to 50 million with expenditure on educational initiatives and product development through aggressive hiring of tech talent. It also aims to launch an ecosystem fund to invest in Indian crypto start-ups and facilitating institutional investments.
The start-up has come a long way and is known to simplify investing in cryptocurrencies. The fresh infusion of capital will help the start-up diversify its product portfolio and become the next biggest fintech player in India. It has raised over $300 million this year and launched its India-exclusive crypto platform in June 2020. The start-up also has an annual revenue of about $50 million.
“CoinSwitch Kuber is on a mission to build wealth for Indians by making crypto more accessible. I believe, simplifying crypto investments for the Indian youth has helped us to stand out. 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 co-founder and CEO Singhal.
