Following a $90 million funding round, CoinDCX is now valued at $1.1 billion, even though the threat of a cryptocurrency ban remains real.
Despite the legal uncertainty hanging over India’s cryptocurrency industry, local exchange CoinDCX has achieved unicorn status following its latest funding round.
CoinDCX raised $90 million in a venture round that valued the firm at more than $1 billion, making it the first Indian cryptocurrency exchange to become a unicorn, the company said on August 9.
Led by Facebook co-founder Eduardo Saverin’s B Capital Group, the Series C round included investments from Coinbase Ventures, Polychain, Block.one, and Jump Capital. CoinDCX was valued at $1.1 billion.
“The funds raised will be allocated to expand — bring more Indians to crypto [and] make crypto a popular investment asset class in India,” CoinDCX CEO Sumit Gupta said in a release.
That last part seems to be well underway, with blockchain intelligence firm Chainalysis reporting that crypto investment jumped from $923 million in April to $6.6 billion in May, Bloomberg reported.
With 3.5 million users at present, CoinDCX Co-Founder Neeraj Khandelwal added that the company’s goal is to bring 50 million Indians onto the platform.
Plans for the funds include “an array of next-generation products with cutting-edge innovations,” the company said. These include CoinDCX Prime for wealthy and enterprise clients, and Cosmex, a global trading product.
It will also develop “partnerships with key fintech players to expand the crypto investor base, set up a Research & Development (R&D) facility, strengthening the policy conversations through public discourse, working with the government to introduce favorable regulations, education, and amping up the hiring initiatives,” Gupta said.
Crypto Ban Less Likely
Those policy conversations remain vital as the government’s threat to ban cryptocurrency altogether may be retreating, but is not gone yet.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government recently shelved plans to bring its Cryptocurrency and Regulation of Official Digital Currency Bill — which would ban cryptocurrency trading altogether — before parliament during the current session. While it has not backed away from that plan, there are signs that it is becoming more open to cryptocurrency, according to India’s Financial Express.
