CoinDCX Becomes India's First Crypto Unicorn, Raises $90 Million The Series C round was led by B Capital Group founded by former Facebook co-founder Eduardo Saverin

CoinDCX has become India's first cryptocurrency exchange to attain the coveted Unicorn status, with its latest $90 million Series C funding round. The round was led by B Capital Group, founded by former Facebook co-founder Eduardo Saverin, with participation from existing investors including Coinbase Ventures, Polychain Capital, Block.one and Jump Capital, among others.

The fundraising values CoinDCX at $1.1 billion. Founded in 2018, CoinDCX has onboarded more than 3.5 million users.

The newly infused capital will be used to focus further on the company's ambition of ensuring that crypto awareness is spread to the length and breadth of India. "The funds raised will be allocated to expand (bring more Indians to crypto/make crypto a popular investment asset class in India) and strengthen our workforce that will cater to our growth story. We will hire talent across multiple functions, and focus on new business initiatives," said Sumit Gupta, co-founder and CEO, CoinDCX in a statement.

With the support of institutional backers in both traditional and digital asset spaces, the company plans to double-down on its efforts to build the next generation of products with cutting edge innovation, improve its existing product array, and strengthen its exchange infrastructure and product team in order to provide the most more secure trading experience with instant liquidity to its users.

"Apart from this, we will be joining hands or enter into partnerships with key fintech players to expand crypto investor base, set up a Research & Development (R&D) facility, strengthening the policy conversations through public discourse, working with the government to introduce favorable regulations, education, and amping up the hiring initiatives," Gupta added.

Additionally, the company will also be working on creating a sustainable growth rate by focussing on customer retention campaigns, among other projects. CoinDCX will continue to scale its dedicated products on the investments and trading side. In the coming months, CoinDCX will also be launching the CoinDCX Prime initiative, its latest offering in the HNI and enterprise space, providing legally vetted and safe investments, as well as Cosmex, CoinDCX's global trading product.

Unicorns Galore

Twenty-two startups have entered the Unicorn club this year in India. This is a huge number when compared with 11 unicorns in 2020. The total unicorn tally has now crossed 50.

In the last few weeks, we saw B2B commerce startup OfBusiness, fintech startup BharatPe, sales enablement startup Mindtickle and upGrad also turn into unicorns. Additionally, upGrad became the third edtech startup in India to turn Unicorn after BYJU'S and Unacademy.

Droom, CRED, ShareChat, Groww, Gupshup, PharmEasy, Meesho, Moglix, Zeta and BrowserStack are some of this year's additions to the Unicorn club. According to Nasscom-Zinnov report, last year, the Indian tech startup base witnessed a steady growth at a scale of 8-10 per cent year-on-year with more than 1,600 tech startups and a record number of 12 additional unicorns—the highest ever in a single calendar year.

Nasscom had forecast that India would have 50 unicorns before the end of 2021. However, India's startup ecosystem has already crossed that number with Droom being the latest feather in the cap.