Leveraging Investor Interest to Build India Crypto Ecosystem

Top crypto entrepreneurs talk about the factors leading to investment in the space, challenges to navigate and reactions to the upcoming bill.

Globally there is a growing interest in crypto and VCs are also gravitating towards it. What are the factors leading up to it? “There is a resurgence in the exchanges. Also, investors’ interest flows with capital. The interest is piqued because there are Indian entrepreneurs doing well in the space. With the crypto sector, Indians are leading it with platforms like Polygon,” says Tarusha Mittal, COO and co-founder, Oropocket.

It is too good an opportunity to not dabble in. And there is more benefit than risk as was earlier associated with crypto says Tarusha.

The next logical step is to build an ecosystem for crypto.

What then would an ideal platform look like?

“The tech is getting developed and users are showing interest. There has to be a way to onboard the users. Also, there are multiple sub-industries within the crypto industry—be it DeFi, Meta, NFT ,etc—and they are growing at a huge rate. The ecosystem to be built has to ensure the onlookers get onboarded. The tech is being developed to help use cases built. Onboarding has to undertaken by platforms, marketplaces, etc. The onboarding has to happen in a seamless way.

One key thing would be a good customer support. That will also create a change. The ecosystem should consist two things—tech that is being developed and the next set of VC investments should be directed toward adoption of customers,” says Vikram Subburaj, Co-founder and CEO, Giottus Cryptocurrency Exchange.

“There are three major blocks for building blocks for the ecosystem—the community incusing business- and development- centric people, funding environment and regulatory clarity,” believes Sandeep Nailwal, Co-founder and COO, Polygon.

Challenges in the system and navigating the maze:

Vikram believes the ecosystem split into technology and investment asset. When looking at ecosystem as technology—as it has grown so fast—this advancement should translate into use case being resolved and people want to see it right away. Crypto platforms solving crypto-specific use cases are doing better, others are taking their own time for adoption. The factors could be scale and competitive environment.

From an investment asset class perspective, challenge is to educate the user on investment and lot of crypto exchanges are trying to do, opines Vikram.

Reactions to the upcoming crypto bill:

Tarusha believes that entrepreneurs been around for a couple of cycles might already have a backup plan in place and are better prepared. “The policymakers have become savvy as well and as industry are hopeful.”

Vikram opines,”The idea is to regulate and safeguard retail investors and industry is happy to follow. Most of the Indian exchanges are following self-regulation and ensure key processes are following KYCs, etc.”