The rise of Crypto in India ft. Ashish Singhal, Founder, CoinSwitch

The Neon Show

"Don't be afraid of failure. Always optimize for success, but be prepared for failure." - Ashish Singhal.
In today's episode, we've brought Ashish Singhal, Founder & CEO of CoinSwitch, to talk about their journey globally and how they're shaping the narrative around crypto in India.
Recently, CoinSwitch, caught people's attention when they used the entire front page of The Times of India to simply wish Happy Diwali, bringing back the pure festive joy, instead of bombarding users with bumper-sized Ads and unrealistic offers like 100% cashback and more.
CoinSwitch currently has more than 13 million+ users, with more than 55% of their users coming from Tier 2 and 3 cities.
Last month, they raised over $260 million in its Series C funding round from Andreessen Horowitz (a16z), Coinbase Ventures, and existing investors. With this, American venture capital firm a16z made its first investment in an Indian unicorn.
During the episode, Ashish talks about the problem-statement CoinSwitch is after, how they are giving an initial flavor of crypto to first-time investors with referrals, and much more.

Notes -

01:40 - Background prior to CoinSwitch

05:33 - Hackathons and starting CoinSwitch

08:39 - Growing globally and launching in India

12:17 - Choosing the right investors for their journey

15:49 - Success of the pre-launch campaign in India

17:19 - Simplifying the crypto-investing experience

29:57 - Current scale on platform

33:14 - “Users always come first, business comes second.”