Coinbase lays off 8% of India staff, hires former Prosus official to relaunch operations in the country

Cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase's decision to cut its workforce will see 8 percent of the company's staff being laid off in India as the crypto crash worsens.

CEO and co-founder Brian Armstrong on June 14 announced the decision to lay off 18 percent of employees "to ensure we stay healthy during this economic downturn".

“Yesterday we made the difficult decision to reduce the size of our team which affected 18% of Coinbase's global workforce. Although this did impact our India hub, the cuts were much lower than the global average. Approximately  ~ 8% of our India team was affected,” Coinbase’s Senior Director for Market Expansion Durgesh Kaushik tweeted on June 15.

Kaushik is responsible for the company’s expansion plans in the Asia-Pacific region, Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA) and the Americas.

Earlier in April, Coinbase had said that its Indian tech hub which was launched last year has over 300 full time employees, and had plans to hire over 1,000 in India this year.

Armstrong in a blogpost said the company “over-hired” when it was growing and the accountability rested with him as the changes were being made because of his earlier decision to significantly scale the team.

As it lets go of thousands of employees, it is hiring at senior positions. It has onboarded former Prosus Ventures and Niti Aayog executive Arnab Kumar who will be responsible for relaunching Coinbase’s operations in India.

Also read: Top Cryptocurrency News on June 15: Crypto crash, a wave of layoffs, and Bill Gates' 'greater-fool' theory

“Despite these challenges, India remains a priority market for Coinbase and a strategic long-term growth bet. We are excited to announce that Arnab Kumar just joined us as Director of India Market Expansion to start building foundational partnerships and operations in the country,” Kaushik said.

Kumar served as India Director of Strategy for Fintech for Prosus before leaving the company in November 2021. At Niti Aayog, Kumar was the program director for frontier technologies.

Coinbase is yet to respond to Moneycontrol queries.

Also read:  Crypto firms lay off hundreds of staff as coin values nosedive

Coinbase entered India in April but had to halt operations within days after NPCI said it was “not aware of any crypto exchange using UPI”.

In its earnings call, Armstrong hit out at the central bank and said it suspended its UPI payment method due to “informal pressure from RBI”.

Global upheaval

Cryptocurrencies and exchanges have hit a rough patch as soaring inflation, rising interest rates and the Ukraine war have put global recovery in doubt and concerns are mounting over some major economies slipping into a recession.

These worries have sank markets across the world, with tech stocks being the worst hit. Crypto markets, too, have crashed and experts expect this downcycle to continue for some time.

Since January 2022, Coinbase’s stock has fallen by close to 80 percent. In the first quarter of 2022, the January-March period, the company’s revenues fell 27 percent year-on-year.

For the first time since its listing, expenses at $1.72 billion exceeded revenues at $1.17 billion, prompting the company to cut costs.

Announcing a change in strategy, the company said on May 17  it planned to slow hiring and reassess its headcount needs against its highest-priority business goals.

The decision to lay off employees comes after the company withdrew multiple job offers. The announcement was made on June 3 in a blog post by chief people officer LK Brock on the company’s website.

Moneycontrol reported on June 7 that many Indians whose offers were withdrawn were left in the lurch with no jobs at hand.