Even as India continues to debate the legality of crypto, CoinDCX has turned into the country’s first crypto unicorn following a $90 million funding round led by Facebook Inc. co-founder Eduardo Saverin and B Capital Group. Existing investors, Coinbase Ventures, Polychain Capital, Block.one, and Jump Capital, participated in the round that has valued the exchange at $1.1 billion.
In an interview with Bloomberg, CoinDCX co-founder and Chief Executive Officer Sumit Gupta said that the company plans to use part of the funds to double the team size to 400 in India.
In an official statement on Tuesday, CoinDCX said it would use part of the funds in spreading awareness about cryptocurrencies in the country and product innovation.
The company said it also plans to set up an R&D facility and strengthen policy conversations about cryptocurrencies with the Central government and the banking regulator Reserve Bank of India that had put a banking ban on crypto entities in 2018. It soon lifted the ban in 2020 March following a Supreme Court direction.
However, the regulator has been cautioning gullible retail investors regarding cryptocurrencies time and again due to their volatile nature.
Founded in 2017 by Neeraj Khandelwal and Sumit Gupta, CoinDCX is a top-rated app for crypto trading alongside WazirX and ZebPay. All these crypto exchanges witnessed a massive jump in their respective user base during the start of the pandemic, even as the price of various cryptocurrencies skyrocketed. In India, crypto investments grew to nearly $6.6 billion in May from a mere $923 million in April 2020, according to Chainalysis.
The investment came when the prices crashed by over half from a peak at $60,000 per Bitcoin last year, thus speaking volumes about the high investor sentiment in the digital currencies. It also coincides with the ongoing debate on the used case and legality of cryptos by policymakers worldwide.