CoinSwitch Kuber - Crypto Exchange

Founded in 2017, CoinSwitch Kuber is India's leading cryptocurrency trading platform and 2nd crypto unicorn.

Feb 21, 2022

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Snapshot

Founded in 2017, Bengaluru-headquartered CoinSwitch Kuber is India’s leading user-friendly cryptocurrency trading platform. It allows users to buy, sell and trade over 400 cryptocurrencies instantly at the best prices with an easy-to-use app that simplifies crypto investments for first-time users.

In 2021, CoinSwitch Kuber became India’s second crypto unicorn after raising $260M in a Series C funding round led by Andreessen Horowitz. It is now valued at $1.9B making it the highest-valued unicorn in India’s crypto trading industry.

The company has captured 60% of the market share with 10 million users and a trading volume of over $5B. It is backed by some of the biggest names in the Crypto industry like Sequoia, Ribbit Capital, Paradigm and Tiger Global, and more.

On the Web: Website, Linkedin

Business Overview & Products

Trading & Investing: As CoinSwitch Kuber’s core product, users are able to instantly buy, sell and exchange cryptocurrencies. The company offers over 400 coins and 100,000 cryptocurrency exchange pairs.
Kuberverse: A blog powered by CoinSwitch Kuber that keeps you up-to-date on topics regarding cryptocurrencies, investing, and more. It mainly focuses on educating users about Bitcoin, Blockchain & Cryptocurrencies to simplify their crypto journey.

The company is operational across India and boasts users from 4,000 cities.

How It Works

Initially, a trader approaches CoinSwitch Kuber regarding their trade requirements, this includes the kind of trading they want to execute as well as its quantity. For instance, trading 0.25 Bitcoin for Ethereum. Once this information is entered by the trader, the company provides them with a list of exchanges to execute the trade on. In order for users to make their own informed decisions, they are provided with user rates from all exchanges. After finalizing the exchange, the user is provided a deposit address by CoinSwitch Kuber to send their coins to and they are also asked to provide the address of where they want the exchanged coins to be sent to.

The company also offers a referral program that pays in Bitcoin. To avail this offer, the trader has to provide their Bitcoin address in return for a referral link. Afterwards, as long as the referred person keeps using the platform, the referrer will continue to earn revenue.

As for payment of these coins, CoinSwitch Kuber offers numerous popular payments methods like UPI (an Indian real-time payment system), bank transfer, and net banking to make transactions easier for users. However, to avail the credit card payment option, the user has to go through a KYC procedure to make sure that the transaction isn’t done with a stolen credit card. The entire purchase procedure takes about 10-30 minutes.

The platform provides traders with the option to accept one kind of cryptocurrency and get paid in another. Moreover, it also allows traders to pay an invoice in over 400 currencies. Once the invoice is paid, the platform exchanges the coins into different crypto of their choice and sends them to the person being paid. Traders on the platform can start trading with as little as $1.3.

The platform also has a blog called Kuberverse to educate traders about Bitcoin, Cryptocurrencies, and Blockchain.

Business Model & Pricing

CoinSwitch Kuber offers consumers fixed prices with no fluctuations. The company charges no subscription, withdrawal, or deposit fees but reportedly has hidden charges. When a user purchases a cryptocurrency the company deducts 1-2% from the cost of the purchase. Traders are not charged any fee for their first 100 days but afterward pay a transaction fee of 0-0.49% depending on the selected exchange for their transaction, with the conversion rate inclusive of the fees. The platform also has different buying and selling rates.

Traction

In 2021, CoinSwitch Kuber reported a profit of about $8M and became the highest valued crypto trading platform in India with a valuation of $1.9B. The company raised $260M in its latest Series C funding round bringing its total funding to over $300M and making it the second crypto unicorn of the country in just 14 months of operations.

The platform has 10 million users, 7 million monthly active users, and a transaction volume of $15B per month. It also attracts investors from 4,000 cities across the country, with nearly 55% of users belonging to tier 2 and 3 cities. The majority of its users are young and first-time investors in the crypto trading scene. The app has more than 10 million downloads and reported a 350 percent growth rate in user base in 2020. In 2022, the company is hoping to earn a revenue of $50M and bring 50 million users on board.

Founder(s) & Team

Ashish Singhal: Co-Founder and CEO at CoinSwitch Kuber. Other than CoinSwitch, Ashish has founded 2 other ventures, Urban Tailor, an online tailoring service, and CRUXPay, a cryptocurrency-focused blockchain naming solution.

Vimal Sagar: Co-Founder and COO at CoinSwitch Kuber. Previously Vimal worked as a Software Engineering Analyst at Accenture, a global professional services company, and later as a Senior Software Engineer at Zynga, a social game developer. He also co-founded CRUXPay along with Ashish Singhal and Govind Soni.

Govind Soni: Co-Founder and CTO at CoinSwitch Kuber. Govind has worked at Amazon as their Software Development Manager and at Livspace as Senior Software Engineer. He also co-founded CRUXPay with Ashish Singhal and Govind Soni.

History & Evolution

Govind, Vimal and Ashish are three software engineers who enjoyed experimenting with tech and participated in many hackathons together. It was during one of these hackathons that they noticed a significant gap in the crypto industry. The price of crypto varied slightly across exchanges based on supply and demand. If users wanted to get better returns from the market, especially at scale, choosing the right exchange played a critical role. That is how the idea of CoinSwitch Kuber came into existence.

In 2017 they launched CoinSwitch Kuber, an aggregator of crypto exchanges that would provide real-time data on the best prices and exchanges for a certain cryptocurrency to be traded. Within a month of the launch, the company was processing over $1M in trades and subsequently got funded by Sequoia Capital. Soon it was catering to users in over 160 countries.

In 2020, CoinSwitch Kuber was launched in India after The Supreme Court overturned the Reserve Bank of India’s ban to not support crypto transactions. The company’s aim was to simplify cryptocurrency investments for Indian retail users. It hit 100,000 user sign-ups during the pre-launch period exceeding its 25,000 users target. The company also launched a mobile app to increase usage among crypto users in India. It became the first cryptocurrency platform to debut an ad campaign on national television. The campaign helped spread the word and educate people about its services, thus increasing the company’s trading volume by 500% and its users to 400,000.

In the first half of 2021, CoinSwitch Kuber raised $15M in its Series A funding round and $25M in its Series B funding round. In the same year, the company raised $260M in its Series C funding round, making it the country’s highest-valued crypto unicorn.

In 2022, the company has launched Recurring Buy Plan (RBP), a systematic way to buy crypto assets in India. This initiative will allow traders to buy a small amount of cryptocurrency every day and in the long run, help them beat market volatility and refrain from making impulsive buying or selling decisions.

From archive.org

Additional Learnings

What sets CoinSwitch Kuber apart from its competitors is the platform’s simplicity. It targets new retail traders who have never seen features like order books and buy or sell orders. The platform’s 75% user base is aged between 18 to 35 and consists of first-time crypto investors. The easy-to-use app and low minimum trade limit, combined with no service, deposit, or withdrawal fees make it the perfect platform for newbies who are just starting out in the crypto trading scene. The company has positioned itself as the go-to crypto trading app for beginners and that’s how it has managed to capture a market share of 60% in the industry.

Market Snapshot

According to Facts and Factors market research study, the worth of global cryptocurrency market was $800M in 2020 and it is expected to increase to $5200M in 2028 at a CAGR of 29.5% from 2021 to 2028.

According to reports, currently India has the highest number of crypto traders globally. At present the number of crypto owners is at 107 million while the investment by Indians in cryptocurrency is expected to reach $241M by 2030.

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