A physical space for your digital assets

After his father bought Bitcoin (BTC) and Ethereum (ETH), Harsh Vakharia found that it was risky to hold cryptocurrency on exchanges that are prone to hackers stealing from them.

Realising that it is also unsafe to store tokens in an electronic wallet — stored on a computer or mobile device — Harsh was inspired to launch Etherbit, a startup that retails hardware wallets.

These wallets are considered safer and more secure than electronic wallets and holding cryptocurrency on an exchange.

"As hardware wallets were not manufactured or available easily in India, I wrote to leading French hardware wallet maker Ledger, which agreed to partner with us and retail their wallets in India,” Harsh says.

Hardware wallets store the user’s private key, a critical piece of information used to sign off on and authorise cryptocurrency transactions.

On its website, hardware wallets begin at a few thousand rupees, but the ones by Ledger and Trezor start at Rs 5,000. The founder says the company is seeing traction from major cities and Tier II and III towns in India.

Read all about how the Indian startup ecosystem is battling the second wave of COVID-19 here.

Here are some useful tools to help you find the nearest vaccine centres in real-time.

You can also share a tribute to COVID-19 warriors, saviours, and survivors here.

The Interview

CXOs from India’s leading real estate, HR, and SaaS businesses reveal how their organisations leveraged technology to shape solutions for the new normal on this CTO roundtable hosted in association with Google Cloud India.

Editor’s Pick: Product Roadmap

Digital ledger app KhataBook tagline reads “Digital India ka Digital Khata” — and it could not be more apt than this for a platform that today has one of the largest MSME networks in India. 

Back in 2016, Khatabook co-founders Ravish Naresh, Ashish Sonone, Dhanesh Kumar, Vaibhav Kalpe, and Jaideep Poonia realised that the khata or ledgers that every Indian MSME carries for accounts bookkeeping needed to be digitised, and someone had to do it with urgency. Read more.

Startup Spotlight

A minimalist approach to skincare 

When Anondeep Ganguly and Prabmehar Singh tried several skincare brands to solve issues of enlarged pores and pigmentation, the duo realised the products in the market were just not doing enough.

“We realised that most combinations of essential oils are harmful to the skin and not beneficial as claimed. Thus, we started Skin Pot to deliver clinically effective, biocompatible skincare formulations without the ubiquitous 'toxins', sensitisers, and irritants,” the co-founders tell YourStory. Read more.

News & Updates

• Fintech giant BharatPe launched a new P2P lending product, 12% Club, to enable consumers to lend any extra money they may have in their savings accounts to borrowers and earn higher returns on that amount versus traditional banking instruments.

• Ahmedabad-based coworking space cum accelerator DevX has announced the launch of women-centric co-working spaces across India to accelerate the growth of women-led enterprises. 

• OneWeb, the Low Earth Orbit (LEO) satellite communications company backed by Bharti, has announced the launch of 34 satellites by Arianespace from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in southern Kazakhstan. The latest launch brings the company's total in-orbit constellation to 288 satellites. 

Before you go, stay inspired with… 

“More education is needed to understand crypto tokens better and not confuse it with something else. Although the crypto can be utility tokens, securities, etc., regulators are mostly concerned about the trading aspect.”

— Harsh Vakharia, Founder, Etherbit

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