Cryptocurrency investment platform CoinSwitch Kuber has raised $15 million ( ₹109 crore) as part of its Series A funding round, led by global fintech and crypto investor Ribbit Capital and San Francisco-based Paradigm. Existing investors Sequoia Capital India and angel investor and CRED founder Kunal Shah also participated in the round.
CoinSwitch said it will use the funds to enhance product, security and technology capabilities, with a view to becoming the de-facto cryptocurrency investment platform for Indian users.
This marks Ribbit Capital’s first investment in an Indian cryptocurrency firm. It had earlier funded lending companies ZestMoney, Capital Float and BharatPe in the country.
CoinSwitch also marks Paradigm’s maiden investment in India. Paradigm was started by the founder of Coinbase, one of the largest cryptocurrency exchanges globally.
Three-year-old CoinSwitch is a global aggregator of cryptocurrency exchanges and launched its India-focused crypto trading platform last June. Within six months, it already has over one million users and expects to have 10 million in the next one year.
The news comes at a time when prices of cryptocurrencies globally have seen a historic rise, with digital currency bitcoin reporting a record high of almost $42,000 on 8 January. This week, bitcoin also saw prices slide by almost 21% over a two-day tumble on Sunday and Monday to as low as $32,389.
“We are thrilled to have the most focused fintech and crypto investors Ribbit and Paradigm join us as partners in our journey to make cryptocurrency investments accessible to retail investors in India. We aim to double down on the Indian market, and are targeting a 10 times growth in our user base by the end of the year,” said Ashish Singhal, chief executive officer and co-founder, CoinSwitch Kuber.
The firm will also run a slew of awareness initiatives to educate investors about the potential of crypto as an emerging asset class, Singhal added.
“We are very excited to invest in CoinSwitch, which we believe can become a generational technology brand in India. We backed the team not only because of their track-record of product and technology innovation, but also because of their resolute commitment to serving their customers,” said Nick Shalek, general partner at Ribbit Capital.
According to CoinSwitch, the Indian market is also witnessing an unprecedented growth in cryptocurrency trading and investments. This has resulted in India becoming the second biggest bitcoin nation, by investments, in Asia after China, and the sixth largest in the world.
“While the crypto landscape in India remains nascent, it has been an exciting past 12 months and over time we believe India could be one of the largest global crypto markets,” said Matt Huang, co-founder and managing partner and Arjun Balaji, investment partner at Paradigm.
CoinSwitch also provides its application programming interface (API) to most of the leading wallets and payment service providers, enabling them to increase their offerings.