Coinbase to hire dedicated team for M&A and investments in India

As part of its aggressive India expansion plans, Nasdaq-listed crypto exchange Coinbase plans to build a dedicated local team that will look into potential investments and acquisition opportunities in the country.

“India is a very critical region for us, we want to go extremely deeper here, so it warrants having a dedicated individual who focuses on and leads mergers and acquisition (M&A) and investments in India,” Shan Aggarwal. Vice President, Head of Corporate Development & Coinbase Ventures, told Business Today. 

“We will hire a lead for the country and grow from there. In going forward, there will be a dedicated team for Coinbase ventures both out of the US and locally in India. The new appointments will be part of the regional strategy. He or she will work with our US and global teams.”

Coinbase Venture is the venture investment arm of the California-based company.

Coinbase has invested over $150 million in Indian technology start-ups, including CoinDCX and Coinswitch Kuber, both of which are now valued over $1 billion.

 Technology and talent are the primary focuses for acquisition in India while ecosystem creation drives its start-up investment thesis.

“We are always looking at acquisitions and investments, across different sizes and phases. The once that we are particularly focused in India region are really technology and talent. We are busy building our own products, and there are great technologies and teams that we can acquire and integrate into our existing organization to better our end products,” Aggarwal said.

Coinbase Ventures in partnership with Buidlers Tribe is hosting a startup pitch event on Friday where seven start-ups are scheduled to present. The company will invest up to $1 million in selected start-ups. 

“It’s just a start. There are no limitations necessarily, nor have we set a threshold to our investments. We want to invest globally in the best entrepreneurs and projects. I am very positive and confident that a lot of those are going to come from India. I have already seen it firsthand. We are going to be hosting more such programs with local ecosystem partners,” he added. 

Coinbase launched full scale crypto trading in India on Thursday. The company announced that its customers will be able to purchase cryptos through the exchange by using the Unified Payments Interface (UPI), the payment method that now accounts for 60 per cent of retail payment traffic in the India.

On Monday, the company’s CEO Brian Armstrong announced on his blog that the exchange is planning to hire over 1000 people for their India office.  It already has 300 employees currently working at their Hyderabad and Bengaluru offices.