Exclusive: CoinSwitch Kuber’s CFO, CBO and SVP quit to launch own startup

Crypto exchange CoinSwitch Kuber is witnessing the departure of its top-level executives as it continues to have a difficult year.

The company's top three executives: Chief Financial Officer (CFO) Sarmad Nazki, Chief Business Officer (CBO) Sharan Nair and head of new initiatives Krishna Hegde have resigned, according to three sources aware of the matter.

Ashish Singhal, co-founder and CEO CoinSwitch Kuber, has confirmed the development to Entrackr.

According to sources, the three executives leaving are teaming up to launch a startup that would offer insights to web3 investors.

Nazki, Nair and Hegde are yet to finalise the name of their startup, added sources. Nazki has been with CoinSwitch Kuber for 15 months whereas Hegde joined the crypto unicorn in September last year. Nair joined the company just after its launch in late 2017 and held several key positions in his four-and-a-half year long stint at CoinSwitch Kuber.

Coinswitch Kuber also confirmed that Ramesh Bafna has joined as the new CFO at the Bengaluru-based firm while Rishav Dev and R Venkatesh will replace Hegde and Nair, respectively.

“After several years of building CoinSwitch, my colleagues and good friends Sharan Nair, Sarmad Nazki and Krishna Hegde have decided to startup in the Web 3 space,” said Singhal in a response to our detailed queries. According to Singhal, CoinSwitch will also look forward to future collaborations with their new venture.

The trio is also in the market to raise a seed round and currently talking to several Web3 focused funds and a clutch of angel investors, as per sources.

“We are super passionate about Crypto and we believe it is here to stay. We will continue to take guidance from [the] CoinSwitch team, which has been my home turf for the last 4+ years as we build India into the Web3 hub of the world,”  said Nair in a response to Entrackr's queries.

Backed by the likes of Tiger Global and a16z, CoinSwitch Kuber has attracted over $400 million across three funding rounds. The company entered the unicorn club in October last year with a valuation of $1.9 billion. It also completed its first-ever buyback of ESOPs worth about $2.5 million.

While the company is headquartered in Singapore, it said that 60% of its topline comes from India as of April 2021. Its Indian entity is yet to file annual financial statements for FY22 but it was profitable in FY21. CoinSwitch Kuber’s domestic entity recorded a 5.5X jump in operating revenue which stood at Rs 71.32 crore in FY21 as compared to Rs 12.93 crore in FY20. Moreover, its profits shot up 3.7X to Rs 23.6 crore in FY21 from Rs 6.3 crore during FY20.

According to the company, its entire revenue comes from India.