It did not disclose the total number of employees benefited by the buyback plan
CoinSwitch plans to hire at all levels and double headcount by the end of calendar year 2022
Additionally, it plans to add other asset classes and financial products on its platform.
Crypto unicorn CoinSwitch completed its first Employee Owned Stock Buyback Plan (ESOP) worth $2.5 Mn (approximately INR 19 Cr.) within 20 months of its operation in India.
According to CoinSwitch co-founder and CEO Ashish Singhal, the share buyback program is a "small effort" to recognize the contribution of its employees to the phenomenal growth of CoinSwitch, which recently joined the unicorn club in India.
The startup did not disclose the total number of employees who will benefit from the buyback plan. However, the number is expected to be small. from meMost of the hiring activities have taken place within the last year and the ESOPs that were awarded to the majority of employees have yet to be awarded.a CoinSwitch spokesperson told Inc42.
On the other hand, the number of CoinSwitch employees has grown from 20 to 500 in less than two years of its presence in the country with the crypto unicorn crossing the 500 employee mark in March this year.
CoinSwitch Announced closing its Series C funding round at $260 Mn at a valuation of $1.9 Bn in October 2021. The round was led by Coinbase Ventures and Andreessen Horowitz (a16z).
The startup is also backed by other big-name investors like Tiger Global, Sequoia Capital, Ribbit Capital, Paradigm, and Coinbase Ventures.
โWe are hiring at all levels and are looking to double our headcount by the end of the 2022 calendar year,โ Singhal added.
Singhal, along with Govind Soni and Vimal Sagar, founded CoinSwitch in 2017 as a global aggregator of cryptocurrency exchanges and launched their India-exclusive crypto platform, CoinSwitch Kuber, in June 2020 with the aim of simplifying crypto investments for retail investors. Indians.
The startup currently claimed to have 15 million registered users on its platform. He said that between January 2021 and January 2022, CoinSwitch's registered user base grew from just over 1 million to 15 million.
โWe met and exceeded our targets in India thanks to the amazing team and we will continue to launch similar liquidity events as part of our commitment to creating wealth for all,โ said Singhal.
The startup now plans to add other asset classes and financial products on its platform to become the tech destination of wealth for all Indians.
However, CoinSwitch is not alone in seeing bright days in India. Indeed, with crypto investing taking a prime position in the country, especially among millennials, its peers such as cryptocurrency exchanges CoinDCX and WazirX are also seeing an increase in trading volumes and user registrations since 2020.
Recently, WazirX has introduced 'BUIDL With WazirX', which would allow crypto entrepreneurs to build their own exchange, according to a press release. With BUIDL, a crypto version of the term 'build', WazirX plans to help aspiring crypto entrepreneurs navigate the landscape.
Crypto market in India
Today, India is one of the fastest growing cryptocurrency markets in the world. A cryptocurrency from last year report by Chain analysis found that India's crypto market grew by 641% between July 2020 and June 2021. The report says that India also has a much higher share of decentralized finance (DeFi) platform activity compared to countries like Vietnam and Pakistan.
According to the report, Joel John, director of crypto investment firm LedgerPrime, estimated that there are 4 times more crypto investors in India than stock investors.
With approximately 20 million Indians actively involved, cumulative cryptocurrency investments in India rose to over $10 billion in November 2021 from $1 billion in 2013. according to the CREBACO crypto-intelligence and research platform.
After Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman addressed a series of confusions around cryptocurrency taxes and proposed a 30% tax on income from digital assets in the last budget session, crypto investors, in In a way, they have ensured that cryptocurrencies come closer to regulations in India.
The fear around cryptocurrencies facing a ban in the country has now also receded into the background.
