The Exchanges

Q And, uh, how did your interest in cryptocurrency started? When was this?

A It started back in 2013. Uh, when I read the Bitcoin white paper, I still don't remember how I've stumbled upon it. Uh, maybe through Reddit for chance and, and other places. Uh, but once I read it, it kind of opened up, uh, the entire financial ecosystem to me. I, I being an entrepreneur, being an introvert, uh, I, I always thought that, you know, finance industry is kind of, uh, you know, kind of closed for closed ecosystem where only the participants could You know, wait, and anyone coming from outside has no value add to that industry. But by reading the Bitcoin white paper, I understood that, you know, the financial tech can be opened up, can be made, made, uh, you know, based on code rather than people. And that's what excited me towards Bitcoin. It was very hard in, in 20, 1314 to get into crypto. I, uh, started a node, uh, running a node for Bitcoin validation. Then, you know, got my first Bitcoin in 2015, started trading it, and then over time got my interest, uh, completely aligned with the crypto world. And in 2017, then we started, uh, CoinSwitch.

AI assessment note: “It started back in 2013. Uh, when I read the Bitcoin white paper”

Q And what made you start CoinSwitch, right? What was the gap in the market that you were seeing?

A So, uh, just to give you a little background into us, uh, a bit more, which helps you relate to why we started CoinSwitch. So we are hackers. So all three of us have been friends for 14 years, me, Go and Wimel, uh, right from day one of college, uh, have been hackers, any hackathon in India that you can think of, we would have won it, uh, including Sequoia hack, Google code for India, LinkedIn hack. And the idea of CoinSwitch actually started as a hack, which later grew to what it is today. We started with a very simple problem that we were ourselves facing. Price of a crypto was varying across exchanges. There were tons of exchanges in the market, global phenomena, 24 seven market. So the price, uh, fluctuations kept on happening. It was harder for a trader to get in at the right time, know the best price at any given point in time and convert, uh, at that exchange as well, because then you need, you know, accounts across exchanges, be familiar with their UI UX. So what we thought of building for ourselves is, can we aggregate the data from all the different exchanges? And help convert crypto to crypto at the best rate, any given point in time. Uh, we made the, think of us like a make my trip for cryptocurrencies, helping you discover the best price as well as convert, convert one crypto to another, uh, very easily.

AI assessment note: “Price of a crypto was varying across exchanges. There were tons of exchanges”

Q And, uh, you suddenly came into limelight in. Any strategic reasons that you kept a low profile during the first three, four years?

A So, uh, since it was a global product, right? And we were not operating in India because of the RBI ban itself. So we grew very rapidly in the other countries, but in India, our presence was mostly unknown. Uh, we never, uh, you know, we, we are not a company who runs after, uh, we see money and, you know, do a lot of marketing. Uh, started very, uh, uh, very humble start, uh, trying to solve the user problem and never discount, never, uh, you know, no, no marketing at all for the first three years, trying to grow very steadily into the market. In 20, 20, we almost had over ten million dollars in profit, uh, recorded, but in 20, 20, something drastic happened when the RBI ban Got reverted, uh, in India. And at that point we decided to launch in India because we saw a very big gap, uh, in India. What we realized was, uh, retail users in India were underserved, uh, retail user who is used to the experience of Swiggy or Zomato, you know, add to cart checkout, food is at your home, or, uh, you know, uh, one click cab booking, online ordering, uh, from Amazon and Flipkart were kind of forced to go to an exchange, understand complicated graphs, complicated order books to get into First crypto is so complex. Now you put that experience on top of it. We assume that people will never get into crypto unless we simplify it. And that's where we launched Kubeir back in June, 2020, almost 17…

AI assessment note: “we were not operating in India because of the RBI ban itself”

Q And, uh, but when you entered in 2020 in Indian market with Kuber, the market was crowded. I think there were more than 30 exchanges in India. How did you differentiate yourself in the user's eyes and what gave you insight that you could be different?

A So I think first thing different about us was that we were building for ourselves, right? We didn't like the experience of exchanges. It becomes so complicated for a user like us who've been in the crypto market for six years, still find that exchange experience to be too convoluted and too complicated. It's meant for traders and does an amazing job for traders, but it's not do, it doesn't do a good job For our retail users who are used to, you know, Swiggy, uh, Uber and kind of Amazon and Flipkart experience, right? And that is where we built this experience for ourselves. The target that we kept for ourselves, can we make it simple enough that our parents can even buy crypto? Uh, right. And, and within a week of our launch, my mother was able to buy crypto through us. I think that was a point we knew that we had something unique, uh, to offer to the users that we have made it simple enough For anyone in every anywhere in India to be able to get into crypto. Right. And that was the differentiation that we brought in making crypto, you know, easy making crypto simple.

AI assessment note: “first thing different about us was that we were building for ourselves”