CoinSwitch Kuber: The second crypto exchange to become unicorn

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The meteoric return, increased awareness and easy onboarding have all contributed to the expansion of the cryptocurrency market in India. Though the regulations around virtual tokens are all blurred, still everyone seems to be interested in being a part of this ongoing hysteria. Incidentally, the interest is shown not only by male investors in metro cities but also by small-towners including women, who are traditionally considered conservative investors. Fuelled by this huge demand, CoinSwitch Kuber has become the second crypto exchange to jump on the unicorn bandwagon in India.

The start-up has raised a Series C Funding of $260 million soaring its valuation to $1.91 billion. The funding round was led by Coinbase Ventures and Andreessen Horowitz including participation from previous investors Sequoia, Paradigm, Ribbit and Tiger Global. Two months back Coin DCX also raised about $90 million from investors taking its valuation to $1.1 billion. The Series C round was led by Facebook co-founder Eduardo Saverin’s B Capital.

“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 Ashish Singhal, co-founder and CEO, CoinSwitch Kuber.

“We are humbled by the trust shown in CoinSwitch Kuber by two of the biggest names in the global crypto investment arena with Andreessen Horowitz choosing us to be their first investment in India. Coinbase Ventures’ investment is also testimony to the confidence they have in CoinSwitch Kuber’s business model and tremendous potential India’s crypto space has to offer,” he said.

Meteoric Rise

CoinSwitch Kuber was established in 2017. Since then the start-up has grown at a rapid pace from 1 million users in November 2020 to 5 million in May 2021, to 10 million in September 2021. With the funds raised the company now plans to onboard 50 million Indians.

What differentiates CoinSwitch Kuber from its competitor is its low-cost structure. Apart from low trading fees for buying and selling cryptocurrencies, the exchange does not charge any transaction fees for deposit or withdrawal fees. The platform also has a unique trading functionality, where it connects multiple exchanges to find the best trade rate for users.

Increased awareness is another reason for the growth of the exchange. According to a report by Chainalysis, India’s cryptocurrency market has grown by 641% over the past 12 months. India’s share of activity on decentralized finance was also 59% higher as compared to Pakistan and Vietnam.

The increased awareness has come on the back of extraordinary returns given by virtual tokens. For instance, even after the downturn in July, Bitcoin and Ethereum are still giving the return of 87% and 385% since the beginning of this year. Comparatively the new cryptocurrency Shiba Inu has given a return of around 350% in just 7 days. With such extremely high returns, more and more people are getting attracted to cryptocurrencies even though the government has still not made clear the future of virtual tokens in India. In such a scenario, the direct benefit goes to exchanges that are offering the platform to buy and sell cryptos at competitive rates.