An Eduardo Saverin-backed exchange just became India's first crypto unicorn amid surging interest

• CoinDCX, India's biggest crypto exchange, announced on Tuesday a fresh valuation of $1.1 billion as crypto has grown parabolically in the country, according to a Bloomberg report.
• The new valuation cements the firm's status as India's first crypto unicorn and comes as investment in the country's digital-asset space has multiplied seven-fold in the past year.
• In an interview with Insider, co-founder and CTO Neeraj Khandelwal said that his company, just founded in 2018, had global ambitions.

CoinDCX, an Indian crypto exchange backed by Facebook co-founder Eduardo Saverin, announced on Tuesday a fresh valuation of $1.1 billion as crypto has grown parabolically in the country, according to a Bloomberg report.

In an interview with Insider, co-founder and CTO Neeraj Khandelwal said that his company, founded in 2018 and already the biggest crypto firm in India, had global ambitions.

"We have customers from more than 65 countries, even though we have never marketed ourselves outside India," said Khandelwal. "That is why we are investing as a company in launching a global platform."

The company's "liquidity aggregation" model pools orders from several exchanges via a single wallet on CoinDCX. Other exchanges have employed such a system, but CoinDCX is the first to do so for a broad retail audience alongside standard features like margin trading, Khandelwal said.

CoinDCX's new valuation cements its status as India's first crypto unicorn and comes as investment in the country's digital-asset space has multiplied seven-fold in the past year, according to Chainalysis data cited by Bloomberg.

For years, the Indian government has appeared to fall squarely in the crypto-skeptical camp, alongside the likes of China and Russia. In 2018, the central bank of India banned banks from dealing with crypto companies, though this was later struck down by the supreme court. Parliament is currently considering a full ban on the asset class.

But Khandelwal seemed more sanguine, telling Insider that many in government - aside from the central bank - are changing their tune on crypto, pointing to a growing effort to replace bans with regulation.

"In the corridors of the government, bitcoin and cryptocurrencies are simply this new technology which India is crazy about," he said. "India certainly does not want to go the China way."