According to the announced on Thursday, Unocoin, one of India’s oldest cryptocurrency exchanges said Draper Associates is currently lead investor with an undisclosed contribution, while XBTO Ventures and 2020 Ventures are also joining the round.
Unocoin CEO Sathvik Vishwanath said that so far $3.5 million has been raised. The exchange has previously raised $3 million from investors including Boost VC, Digital Currency Group and India-based Blume Ventures, according to Coindesk.
(From left) Co-founders Sunny Ray, Sathvik Vishwanath, Harish BV and Abhinand Kaseti | Photo Credit: Unocoin / India Times
“We’ve seen a dramatic increase of crypto adoption in India following the lifting of an industry-wide ban by the Reserve Bank of India enacted in 2018. Customer growth rates have surged by more than 10X in the month the Supreme Court verdict was announced, accompanied by a 5X increase in trading volume in subsequent months. The funding will help us scale our business further and give us a strong financial foothold to expand our platform’s offerings,” said Sathvik Vishwanath, CEO of Unocoin,.
Tim Draper, Founder of Draper Associates, which was among the early investors in companies like Tesla, Skype, and Twitter said: “We were delighted to hear the verdict by the Indian Supreme Court, and we had been tracking Unocoin, the leader in India for Bitcoin for years. We are so thrilled that the stars aligned and we could finally back Unocoin.”
Founded in 2013, Unocoin currently has 1.3 million customers, and all of these are Indians, said Vishwanath. Out of these, about 250,000 are active customers, he said. As for Unocoin’s team size, Vishwanath said it is expected to grow to about 50 from the current 30 by mid next year, mainly by hiring customer service executives.
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