India's Coinswitch Kuber raises $260m
Indian crypto exchange Coinswitch Kuber is claiming to be the largest app of its kind locally following a $260 million Series C round featuring Andreessen Horowitz at a $1.9 billion valuation.
This is Andreessen's first investment in an Indian start-up. The Silicon Valley-based firm was active in Asia’s crypto and blockchain space earlier this week when it led a $152 million round for Vietnam’s Axie Infinity.
Tiger Global Management, Sequoia Capital India, and Ribbit Capital also joined the Coinswitch round, as did sector-focused investors Paradigm and Coinbase Ventures. Tiger provided $25 million in Series B funding at a valuation of $500 million in April, which was only three months after a $15 million Series A.
Crypto exchanges represent one of the best-funded categories in the increasingly mainstream blockchain opportunity set. In India, the momentum is supported by a recent Supreme Court decision that rejected a previous ban on crypto trading as unconstitutional.
In August, exchange operator CoinDCX raised $90 million from at a group of investors including Coinbase at a valuation of $1.1 billion, claiming to become the country’s first crypto unicorn only three years after launch. Earlier that month, Coinbase backed a $25 million Series A for a similar company, Vauld.
The largest player in this space is WazirX, a subsidiary of global leader Binance, which recently set up a $50 million fund targeting Indian crypto start-ups. There are estimated to be about 15 million crypto investors in the country.
CoinSwitch, which claims to have 10 million users, said it plans to use the fresh capital to bring 50 million Indians onto its platform, while introducing new products, increasing the size of its team, providing crypto education to investors, and launching an ecosystem fund. The user base was 4.5 million in April.
The company was set up in 2017 by a team of former employees of Amazon, Microsoft, and Accenture with a view to democratizing virtual currencies as an asset class. It has a strong focus on the mass market, with capacity to facilitate investments as small as INR100 ($1.34) and a range of education services.
“We are incredibly excited about the crypto market opportunity in India, and with its breakout growth, CoinSwitch has emerged as the leading retail platform in the country,” David George, a general partner at Andreessen, said in a statement. “[CEO Ashish Singhal] and the team have demonstrated strong execution abilities and the ambition to deliver an investment platform for the masses in India."
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