Crypto firm CoinSwitch lays off 44 employees

Crypto asset platform CoinSwitch has laid off 44 employees citing redundancy in the customer support team. This is the first layoff at the Bengaluru-based firm.

A CoinSwitch spokesperson said, “...we right-sized our customer support team to align with the present volume of customer queries on our platform. This impacted the roles of 44 members of our customer support team, who voluntarily resigned from their roles after a detailed discussion with their managers earlier this month.”

Moneycontrol, which reported the development first, said that there were layoffs in the operations team as well. However, the CoinSwitch spokesperson added that there is no separate operations team for its Virtual Digital Assets Business.

Started in 2017 by Ashish Singhal, Govind Soni, and Vimal Sagar, CoinSwitch was launched as a global aggregator of crypto exchanges which launched its India operations in June 2020. CoinSwitch is one of the top funded companies in the space. The firm raked in $260 million in Series C funding round from Andreessen Horowitz (a16z), Coinbase Ventures and others to join the unicorn club. It has raised over $400 million across three funding rounds.

In August last year, the Enforcement Directorate raided the offices of cryptocurrency exchange CoinSwitch over alleged violations of the Foreign Exchange Management Act. The government agency also raided other crypto companies including CoinDCX and WazirX.

Last week, another crypto unicorn CoinDCX laid off 71 employees citing the prolonged bear market and the impact of TDS on domestic exchanges. Globally, Coinbase, Polygon, Genesis Global Trading, Dapper Labs, and Messari, among others, also went through mass layoffs in 2023. 

While the Indian government has not banned cryptocurrencies, the increased scrutiny of the space along with hefty taxation has made it difficult for the investors to rally behind crypto-focused startups.

Recently, Prime Minister Narendra Modi also called for a global collaboration on formulating crypto regulations during the annual Group of 20 (G20) summit.