The Indian crypto industry is showing no signs of stopping despite the unknown status of the new technology. Recently, popular crypto exchange CoinSwitch Kuber has raised a substantial sum of money, becoming the 30th unicorn startup in India.
The crypto exchange has raised over $260 million in a Series C funding round. American venture capital firm a16z (Andreesen Horowitz) and Coinbase Ventures have led the round with a valuation of $1.9 billion.
CoinSwitch Kuber overtook CoinDCX’s valuation of $1.1 billion, which they had announced in August.
Other than the abovementioned investors, Paradigm, Ribbit Capital, Sequoia Capital, and Tiger Global have also participated in CoinSwitch’s round.
Many people think CoinSwitch Kuber is a very new company considering its operations started very recently. However, the foundation of the crypto exchange happened in 2017. CEO of the crypto exchange, Ashish Singhal, had laid the foundation back then. He has worked at Amazon and Microsoft in the past.
Govind Soni and Vimal Sagar are co-founders and hold the chief technology officer and chief operating officer positions, respectively.
The exchange began operations in India in June 2020. Moreover, its main focus is on simplifying crypto investing to as simple as ‘ordering food.’
According to Singhal, the newly acquired funds are essential for building new asset classes. In his words:
“A lot of people who invest with us are under the age of 28 and are first-time investors who haven’t invested in any other assets other than crypto. These young users will want to grow with us as a platform, de-risk themselves from the volatility of crypto, and eventually have a portfolio which is balanced on the volatility end.”
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