Cryptocurrency exchange CoinDCX has raised $90 million (about Rs 668 crore) in its Series C round, led by Facebook co-founder Eduardo Saverin’s B Capital.
The funding values the company at $1.1 billion, making it the latest entrant to the unicorn club, or those startups with a valuation of $1 billion or more. India has added 21 startups to the coveted list so far this year.
This also makes CoinDCX the first crypto company in India to attain unicorn status.
Existing investors Coinbase Ventures, Polychain Capital, Block.one, Jump Capital, and other angel investors also participated in the round, a senior company executive said.
ET was the first to report on July 28 about the capital raising deal.
Including the latest round, the company has raised $110 million from investors.
The funds will be used for marketing, strengthening the team and on new business initiatives, Sumit Gupta, cofounder and CEO of CoinDCX told ET.
The company has earmarked Rs 10 crore for its educational initiatives across platforms. It will double its team from the existing 180 over the next six months.
Founded in 2018 by Gupta and Neeraj Khandelwal, CoinDCX helps people buy and sell crypto tokens. It also offers other crypto-based financial products such as lending.
“In the coming months, CoinDCX will also be launching the CoinDCX Prime initiative, its latest offering in the HNI and Enterprise space, providing legally vetted and safe investments, as well as Cosmex, CoinDCX’s global trading product,” Gupta added.
The exchange has 3.5 million users and has more than doubled its user base in the last two months.
CoinDCX competes with Binance-owned WazirX, which has over 7 million users, as well as a handful of other crypto exchanges including ZebPay.
Mainstream interest in crypto platforms has been on the rise in India this year.
CoinDCX’s announcement comes on the heels of crypto platform Vauld raising money from Peter Thiel’s Valar Ventures and CoinSwitch Kuber from Tiger Global earlier this year.
Crypto exchanges are a lucrative investment given the highly profitable nature of the business, investors have told ET.
International investors with experience in dealing with an uncertain regulatory environment in other countries and industries are not shying from investing in the cryptocurrency business in India, even as most Indian funds adopt a cautious approach.
“Most new markets have regulatory uncertainty,” a senior executive at a blue-chip VC fund said.
“GPS was a regulated industry a few decades ago. Taxis and hotels were as well (and still are) in many parts of the world. Health and space tech are other examples. Investors that have seen the journeys of previously regulated industries that were opened up by resilient and thoughtful founders are willing to back best-in-class teams they feel will find a path. Because if you do, the upside is immense,” the person said on condition of anonymity.
The hyper-growth and investor interest in the nascent industry comes despite talks of a proposed ban and major banks cutting access to Indian crypto exchanges.
Most recently, the Income-Tax department sent notices to at least three exchanges, asking them to share all ledger entries to find out the price, time, and the number of coins sold by a trader, ET reported earlier.
