CoinDCX Becomes India’s First Crypto Unicorn

Indian cryptocurrency exchange CoinDCX was able to reach an unicorn status after its $90 million Series C funding round, which brought the company’s valuation to around $1.1 billion, CoinDCX said in a blog post on 10 August.

According to the announcement, the funding round was led by B Capital Group, and also saw participation from returning investors such as Block.one, Coinbase Ventures. Polychain, and Jump Capital. Following the Series C round, CoinDCX also became the first crypto business in India to reach a unicorn status. Neeraj Khandelwal, co-founder of CoinDCX, said in a statement:

“This achievement belongs to each and every DCX team member. I can guarantee this decade is going to be the DCX Decade where we will disrupt the FinTech sector with innovative cutting edge technologies.”

Founded in 2018, the exchange has already gathered a user base of around 3.5 million, which it hopes to expand to up to 50 million using the newly acquired funds. Part of the funding will also go towards doubling the exchange’s team, forming new partnerships, establishing a Research & Development facility, education, and working with the government to introduce favorable regulations for the industry.

Becoming India’s first crypto unicorn is no small feat, considering the unclear stance of the government when it comes to crypto. Back in March, Reuters cited an anonymous senior government official, who said India was preparing to criminalize the possession, issuance, mining, trading, and transferring of crypto assets in the country. The situation was made more confusing by Nirmala Sitharaman, India’s Finance Minister, who said the same day the ministry was not planning to shut off innovations associated with Bitcoin. She said:

“From our side, we are very clear that we are not shutting all options. We will allow certain windows for people to do experiments on the blockchain, bitcoins or cryptocurrency.”