Crypto and blockchain is a space where India will make its mark and contribute globally, we aim to help build that ecosystem: Ramalingam Subramanian, CoinDCX

• Founded in 2018, CoinDCX raised $90 million in a Series C funding round in August this year, becoming the first Indian cryptocurrency exchange to achieve unicorn status.
• Now, it is going all out to spread awareness and educate people about the segment. They have recently onboarded Amitabh Bachchan as its brand ambassador to get visibility and become a trusted platform in the minds of its consumers.
• We speak to Ramalingam Subramanian, Head of Brand, Marketing and Communications at CoinDCX who tells us all about its association with Bachchan, and how it is going about building a strong, safe platform and educating people about the segment.

Cryptocurrency exchange platform CoinDCX hit the headlines this year after it became India’s first crypto unicorn a few months back. In the last one year, we have seen the platform do a lot to raise awareness about cryptocurrency and to give its efforts to increase visibility and win the consumer’s trust, the platform onboarded Amitabh Bachchan recently as it face.

CoinDCX has also been working on making the ecosystem more inclusive. It recently launched a specially designed learning module on blockchain and cryptocurrency for the hearing-impaired community. Earlier, it had also announced that its become the first crypto player to join the Advertising Standards Council of India (ASCI) to actively support the advancement of advertising standards within India’s cryptocurrency and digital asset industry, to promote transparency in communications and building public confidence in the space. And getting Bachchan on board is another step in that direction.

To understand how this partnership will help CoinDCX get more visibility and what marketing plans it has for the future, we spoke to Ramalingam Subramanian, Head of Brand, Marketing and Communications at CoinDCX.

Getting Amitabh Bachchan on board as the face of CoinDCX

Amitabh Bachchan is a crypto investor himself and had launched his own NFTs in September. Right now, the task at hand for CoinDCX and other players in the segment is to win the confidence of people, raise awareness and educate, while convincing them that it is safe to invest on crypto.

“Since we started, our aim has been to make crypto more accessible in India and the way to do that is to educate and acquire. We unanimously decided to get Amitabh Bachchan on board because we have seen him create awareness innumerable times in the past, be it with government campaigns like polio or Swachh Bharat. We have also seen him create magic on the brand side, for example when Cadbury wanted to revive its itself, it brought Mr Bachchan on board. From a crypto perspective, we thought he would be the right person to create the necessary awareness around the category. Our aim is to help people get rid of some of their preconceived notions about the category and we felt Mr Bachchan would be perfect to help us communicate that,” shared Subramanian.

He also maintained that the partnership isn’t just a marketing campaign-led decision and will involve in some last-mile educating about the category by Bachchan along with the campaigns.

“Mr Bachchan’s association with us will definitely impact the awareness and adoption quotient and his knowledge will also help us understand the larger market better and reach out to people in the right manner. Our aim so far has been to raise awareness and with him on board now, we will be able to amplify our message much better,” he added.

The growth story so far

The segment is still at a nascent stage in India and while there has been an increase in people’s interest in the segment, there still needs to be a lot of educating required. Moreover, a lot of people are still unsure about the safety of investing on cryptocurrency.

However, CoinDCX has witnessed good growth in the past year and there is a visible appetite for the currency as people are reading up more and are looking at the segment as a way of diversifying their investments.

“While there have been challenges on our way, our journey so far has taught us resilience. We are confident that whatever challenges and minor confusions come our way, once there is more understanding and awareness, we will all be in a better place,” he said.

Subramanian shared that in the last one year, the platform has witnessed good growth and the growth has come from all segments, traditional investors along with a growth of people from Tier II and III cities. “Along with people from smaller cities, we are also seeing more and more women actively invest. It an un-learning issue and people who are more receptive to newer ideas seems to be the ones coming in much better. We are seeing people come in, diversify and hold on to it, they are trying to understand the investment building strategies, and this is across segments, which is a very positive sign that people are buying into the concept of blockchain and crypto,” Subramanian said.

On what actual growth they have seen on the platform in terms of user base, he said, “Over the last six months, we crossed a total registered user base of 4 million, and these are not just installs but registered users. We wanted to build the right product and structure before we went mass. When we launched a new product in January, we did a fair amount of testing and checks in the first few months but from April, we started going heavy and a lot out of the 4 million users came in between April and today.”

The future

While it is still a new segment, CoinDCX is trying to educate more and more people about the space in an attempt to raise awareness. It also joined ASCI to understand how to be ethical in terms of its advertising.

“Working with ASI would mean we will be able to understand the finer details of what we are doing right and where we’re going wrong. This will improve the overall quality of our communication. Being a member of ASCI also means we are putting ourselves under some form of regulation and we're open to that because their values and vision is very closely aligned with us. Hopefully in the years to come, we'll be able to also worked with them to create specific regulations for advertising in this space,” he explained.

On what his vision for the platform is, he said, “We generally joke around in office that just like today everyone has a payment app, they should have a crypto investment app, one that has been created by us. That’s our focus for India. When we look at crypto adoption across the world, we truly believe that this industry can contribute to the $5 trillion goal set by our Prime Minister and we could definitely look at financial exports. As a nation, in the first wave of the internet revolution, we were just the consumers. We did not contribute in building it. The second wave was largely built by us but with capital from the Western world. This is a time when we have both the knowledge and the capital. We have started doing that in smaller space phases, especially in the FinTech space. Crypto and blockchain is another space where India will be able to make its mark and contribute globally. Our larger vision is to help build that ecosystem. Like we have platforms like Facebook and Twitter coming out of the US, we can have these crypto blockchain companies, which we truly believe is the next big thing after the internet, coming from India,” he concluded.