[Funding alert] Indian crypto unicorn CoinDCX raises $135M Series D round led by Pantera and Steadview

Indian crypto exchange CoinDCX today announced it has closed a $135 million Series D funding round led by Pantera and Steadview, with participation from Kingsway, DraperDragon, Republic, and Kindred.

As per a statement, the $135 million round saw existing investors B Capital Group, Coinbase, Polychain, and Cadenza increase their investments in CoinDCX, as the crypto exchange now looks to support the growth of the crypto/Web3 industry in India.

“The latest round by some of the largest institutional investors only reinforces the belief in India's immense potential in the crypto ecosystem. With a shared vision of a digital-first economy, we see this round as a strong endorsement of the amazing work that CoinDCX has done for the ecosystem over the years and our plans for the future,” said Sumit Gupta, Co-Founder, and CEO, of CoinDCX.

He added, “With a wide array of products built for India, and the commitment to building compliant, simple, and safe solutions, we are uniquely positioned to help forge greater understanding and trust between regulators, industry, and our users, ultimately helping accelerate the growth of crypto adoption in India and further the march of Web 3.0.”

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Long term faith, short term challenges

CoinDCX's fundraise comes at a time when Indian crypto exchanges are once again grappling with payment partner breakups.

Last week, just three days after announcing its India launch and Unified Payments Interface (UPI) integration, global crypto exchange Coinbase halted UPI transactions on its app, after The National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI), which runs the UPI platform, refuted Coinbase's claim of using UPI for crypto transactions.

In another recent blow to the cryptocurrency ecosystem in India, Kotak Bank halted payments to and from their exchange partner CoinSwitch Kuber. Kotak Bank's decision came on the heels of payment service provider MobiKwik's decision to sever ties with all cryptocurrency exchanges in the beginning of April.

MobiKwik was one of the few financial service providers that was regularly partnered with multiple crypto exchanges in India.

Despite these setbacks, CoinDCX believes the latest round of funding has reaffirmed global investor sentiment on the long term potential for India in the crypto industry. It claimed that with this round, CoinDCX has become the highest valued crypto company in India.

To support its vision of building India's crypto/web3 ecosystem, CoinDCX also aims to triple its talent pool to over 1000 employees by the end of 2022.

“They have added new retail and institutional products critical to the crypto infrastructure in India. In the process CoinDCX has become the gateway to the Web 3.0 space for new to crypto users. We are excited to deepen our partnership with Sumit, Neeraj [Khandelwal] and the exceptional team at CoinDCX on their journey to shape India’s crypto landscape,” said Kabir Narang, Founding General Partner of B Capital Group.

Paul Veradittakit of Pantera said, "Pantera has been an early and active backer in India and believes that we are in the early innings of Web 3.0 use cases exploding in the country to potentially making India one of the global leaders in the Web 3.0 space. We are immensely excited about investing in CoinDCX and have been impressed with their clear strategy, persistence, and execution capabilities. We are confident that CoinDCX’s innovative and compliant suite of products will lead both consumers and institutions into digital assets and Web 3.0." 

“We have long been impressed by CoinDCX’s vision to build a thriving Web 3.0 ecosystem in India and it has been our pleasure to support the team’s execution in building the most customer-centric and feature rich crypto exchange in India following our initial investment in 2021. We are excited to now deepen our investment to fuel the growth of one of the most loved Web 3.0 companies in India.” said Ravi Mehta, Managing Director, Steadview.

In August 2021, CoinDCX became India's first crypto exchange to reach unicorn status when it raised a $90 million Series C funding round led by B Capital Group at a valuation of $1.1 billion.