We will have seven new products by the end of next year, including FDs, ETFs, and mutual funds: CoinSwitch's Ashish Singhal

Ashish Singhal, Co-founder and CEO, CoinSwitch

CoinSwitch, a cryptocurrency startup, is transforming into a wealthtech platform with the introduction of a new logo and app design. It intends to launch at least seven new products by the end of next year, including fixed deposits, bonds, exchange-traded funds (ETFs), stocks, and mutual funds.

This rebranding and expansion come amid challenges for the Indian crypto industry, including falling trading volumes, regulatory uncertainty, high taxes, and the recent collapse of the FTX platform. CoinSwitch was founded in 2017 as a global crypto exchange aggregator, and launched CoinSwitch Kuber, an India-exclusive crypto exchange aggregation platform, in 2020 after the lifting of the crypto ban in India. However, as part of its rebranding, CoinSwitch has decided to drop the word "Kuber" from its name.

The company recently raised $260 million in a funding round led by Coinbase Ventures and Andreessen Horowitz (a16z) at a valuation of $1.9 billion.

In an interview with Moneycontrol, Ashish Singhal, the co-founder and CEO of CoinSwitch, discussed the company's recent overhaul, its fintech strategy, and its eventual goal of listing on the stock exchanges. Edited excerpts:

 What has the response been to the rebranding?

Our average app session time has increased. People are loving the new design. They've been asking for the dark theme for a while, but it's much beyond a dark theme. It's a complete revamp, setting us up for multiple asset classes.

The new re-launched app is going for a content-first approach. How is CoinSwitch approaching this and what does that really mean for the end customer?

Other asset class offerings like Groww, Zerodha and many others have done an amazing job of simplifying UX, right? CoinSwitch was the pioneer in simplifying crypto with just one click buy and sell two years ago. But if you look at different asset classes, some issues have been resolved here and there. However, the number of investors involved in the ecosystem is still very small. It accounts for less than 2% of the Indian population.

It's not because the platforms aren't simple enough. It's because people don't know how to make a decision about which mutual fund to buy or which stock to pick.

So until this knowledge goes up, the adoption will always be stagnated at a certain level. It will not grow at the same rate as in the United States, where 33% of the population now invests. We will never reach that percentage if we continue to simplify the action through various apps rather than addressing the first step, which is where to invest.

We added articles, quizzes, and used various methodologies to engage people in the content so they could learn.

What are the kinds of offerings we'll get to see on CoinSwitch?

I don't have timelines for each, but the idea is that over time, every single asset class that is present or that is good for Indian users to invest in will be available on CoinSwitch. Fixed deposits, bonds, ETFs, stocks, mutual funds, US stocks, and any other offering that a user should use in their portfolio will be available on CoinSwitch.

Are these going to be linked to crypto or is it going to be more like the traditional products being offered by others?

Crypto would be just another asset class in our ecosystem. At heart, we will always be a crypto company. But the problem that we are trying to solve is investment itself. We would first assist you in understanding how you should diversify. For example, of the Rs 10,000 per month set aside for investments, what parameters must be considered when investing in various asset classes? And by what percentage? How should you view risk and similar matters? So, it's not just linking crypto to other asset classes, it's about linking investing, and putting crypto in the right place in the investment ecosystem.

The timing of the rebranding and announcement is very interesting, given that the global shock of the FTX collapse just happened a month ago. So why now?

To be honest, as an entrepreneur, I think one thing that you cannot control is the market. So you can never time your product.  We don't know if this is the right time or the wrong time, because we cannot control the time. This has been in the works for over a year now. We could have never predicted FTX, we could have never predicted the downfall in the economy, the recession in the US that we are looking at.

The idea is to continually work for your users. As a product, you can work in all markets; that is the learning that we should also have, and we should give it to our users. Launching in different markets actually helps us learn how to faster build products. I'd say we don't have to worry about when we launch; we just have to worry about whether it's the right product for the market conditions we're in.

We obviously believe that this is the right product in a down market. Diversification is specifically important.

In terms of the wealth management ecosystem, how big of a market opportunity or scope we are looking at in India?

First, there are players already existing in this space. They have done an amazing job right, nothing to take away from their success, especially in the COVID times when everything was going digital they were able to scale and serve the users amazingly well. But, as I mentioned earlier, less than 2% of Indians invest. The market itself is massive. What they have captured is also a very small segment of the market.

We believe in the next four years, we would start leading this market. We believe that in the next four to five years, India will go from 2% to 10% of Indians investing in any other single market. That would be a big jump into the market. And I'm including fixed deposits and others as well. And, obviously, CoinSwitch wants to be the number one player in that market.

As you are coming out with these products, are there tie-ups and partnerships in place, how are you approaching it? Are the conversations on with the regulators for such products?

So different models exist, and we are experimenting with various models as well. We're figuring out what the best user experiences are. And by the time we launch, we'll have finalised those business models. But today, there are multiple partnerships in place since we are launching such large-scale assets onto our platform.

These are regulated products, and we have to engage every stakeholder at the right time, at the right place and with the right information. We continue to do that. Building trust in the ecosystem, as we have done in crypto. We employ government engagements, we have all led those conversations, similar to that we will continue to do the engagements in the rest of the asset classes.

Does CoinSwitch plan to go for an IPO at any point?

Definitely. I think that's the dream of every entrepreneur in India. The idea is also to innovate on the business models of the company and being a fintech company that's what we want to do.

So to go to IPO, I think we have to solve not just the product for our users, but also some of the business models have to evolve in the fintech industry, to be able to have consistency in their performance over time. And that's what we are looking for. And hopefully, when crypto gets regulated, we will go for an IPO.

Because there's a lot of tech involved in the new product due to the whole portfolio analysis aspect and you need to really monitor each of your users to provide them the value. What's going on in the backend in terms of tech ramp-up?

We will end up with seven products, hopefully by the end of next year. We have ramped up our tech, and we have hired some of the very amazing guys from Flipkart and Myntra who were leading their tech; like our principal architect comes from Flipkart. So we have already hired some of the great people in the company and will continue to hire. Our tech hiring is still going on.