Web 3.0 is slowly and steadily taking hold of the digital industry. Cryptocurrencies have become a significant and rising factor in today’s digital economy. It has become a growing trend among the younger and tech-savvy generations all over the world to have ownership of cryptocurrency in their crypto wallets. Bitcoin, Ethereum, Ripple, Bitcoin Cash BCH, Litecoin, Dogecoin, and others have gained quick popularity among crypto traders in a short time due to easily available crypto-exchanging platforms and the social media discussions fueled by Mr. Elon Musk.
The crypto exchange trend has skyrocketed the global cryptocurrency market cap to a two-trillion-dollar level. The use of mobile and website platforms has significantly increased the number of crypto buyers’ bases. There has become a high demand for a crypto trading platform to provide a distinctive and reliable exchange service. WazirX, a platform founded in the year 2018, has rapidly gained trust among the vast number of crypto traders in India.
Within a few years of launching, WazirX has become a widely used cryptocurrency trading platform in India. It has created a highly secure crypto trading and exchange atmosphere in its interfaces across mobile operating systems and websites. The company launched the world’s first auto-matching peer-to-peer (P2P) engine with high liquidity to make crypto conversion cheaper, faster, and simpler for everyone. WazirX can efficiently handle millions of transactions without a lag. It has built a simple, easy-to-use interface design to make its services quickly accessible to every user.
We interviewed Mr. Nishcal Shetty, CEO of WazirX, to get insights into his company’s journey and understand his views on the inclining cryptocurrency market.
Below are the excerpts from the interview:
Please brief our audience about your company, its values, and how it is positioned as a leading player in the cryptocurrency exchange space.
At WazirX our core vision is to enable the transition from a centralized to decentralized world that will help every Indian build a new investment and earning avenue. Educate and drive India to the forefront of the crypto revolution by constantly innovating and building the most secure, reliable, easy-to-use platform and assisting the industry in developing a regulated ecosystem.
As pioneers in the space, we instill our values through our educational marketing initiatives effort to inform and debunk all fears and opportunities that our stakeholders hold with crypto in a growing Web 3.0 world. The safety and security of our investors is our topmost priority and in an unregulated space, we have mindfully undertaken several proactive measures to secure our investors and self-regulate.
We launched India’s first Transparency Report last year September sharing insights on how we work with law enforcement agencies and fair and comply with legal requests in absence of regulation.
What solutions and services does your company offer, and how are these impacting the industry and your clients?
Launched in 2018, WazirX’s mission is to make crypto accessible to everyone in India. WazirX is available for the global audience, and key features include:
- Instant INR (fiat) deposit and withdrawal options to help users enter and exit anytime 24×7
- 200+ market pairs
- World’s first auto-matching P2P engine with high liquidity
- QuickBuy your favorite crypto with just a tap
Share your opinion on how modern technologies have transformed the crypto industry, and what more could be expected in the future?
The awareness and adoption of new technologies that are part of the Web 3.0 ecosystem such as NFTs, Gaming, and Tokenomics and the shift towards metaverse are leading to more innovation in the crypto space.
The use cases and impact of these technologies on the lives of creators, developers, and investors have increased in volume and created opportunities for several individuals who are now working from home and come from diverse backgrounds to build for the crypto and blockchain industry.
We wish that there is more competition amongst crypto industry players to solve the industry-wide problems we face due to lack of regularity clarity. Therefore, we are eager to see some support from our regulators to push the crypto industry towards India’s goal to build a $5 Trillion digital economy.
During the pandemic, what challenges did you face and how did you drive your company to sustain operations while ensuring the safety of your employees?
The pandemic took a tremendous toll on the overall working population across the globe changed the way we used to operate and helped us prioritize better. Our team grew from 30 members last year Jan 2021 to 200+ employees within a year and we have several examples of diverse talent coming from non-crypto backgrounds.
At a time when the COVID-induced layoffs have crippled the job market, as per CryptoTech industry report by NASSCOM provides employment for over 50,000 individuals in India the market is expected to grow 2X faster and has the potential to create 800k+ Jobs By 2030. It also has the potential to create an economic value addition of USD 184 billion in the form of Investments and cost savings.
WazirX is the first-ever remote-first crypto company in India. Therefore, all employees at having the freedom to Work from Anywhere and use our 24X7 mental health support system as necessary. This also led to democratizing the opportunity to pursue a career in this cutting-edge space from any part of the world. Our teammates are from all over the country and have the flexibility to take ownership of their work and work from anywhere.
India’s largest cryptocurrency exchange, WazirX, is on a stellar run with its ultra-high-growth trajectory wherein it has doubled its team strength in the first quarter of 2021. The growth of the crypto exchange is backed by an ever-increasing customer footfall. The platform is further leading the industry developments with several partnerships for ultramodern use cases including Non-Fungible Tokens (NFT).
What would be your advice to budding entrepreneurs aspiring to venture into the crypto exchange space?
As entrepreneurs, you might get hundreds of new ideas, but staying true to what you’re building and the willingness to make it successful is the most important. Don’t be overwhelmed by the success of your competitors. With focus, persistence, and time, you’ll get there. Make sure you identify the problem before coming up with the solution. Make sure you talk to your customers and listen to what they want.
How do you envision scaling your company’s operations and offerings in 2022 and beyond?
With WazirX, our goal is to make crypto accessible to everyone in India. Our crypto exchange today, allows Indians to buy, sell, trade crypto at the best prices in India. We have also launched an NFT Marketplace which allows anyone to buy/sell non-fungible tokens using WRX. Over $108,000 worth of NFTs have been sold on the NFT Marketplace till now.
We are working on an OTC Desk as well as a Decentralized Exchange (DEX). Besides providing Indians with the best products to participate in the crypto phenomenon, we are also working on several educational initiatives to spread the right information about crypto in India.
In fact, we have also partnered with Gurukula Kangri (Deemed to be University) situated at Haridwar to provide a free course in blockchain technology to the Indian youth. Equipped with in-depth knowledge about blockchain-based technologies, the Indian youth will be able to explore the expanding job opportunities in the crypto industry.
The Prime Architect
Nischal Shetty is a nationally recognized, seasoned entrepreneur with over a decade-long experience in building and scaling global products out of India. A Software Engineer by degree, he has founded two successful startups along with his two other co-founders Siddharth Menon and Sameer Mahtre – Crowdfire, a social media management product with over 20 million users, and WazirX, India’s largest crypto exchange by volume with over 10 million users.
Even though Nischal had been a blockchain believer for many years, he got serious about crypto when centralized social networks like Twitter and Instagram started cutting off API access in 2017. He realized that one cannot depend on centralized companies because they can change the rules of the game whenever they want. After trying out Indian crypto exchanges, and getting disappointed by the UX and opaqueness, he decided to build WazirX. Launched in 2018, WazirX’s mission is to make crypto accessible to everyone in India. WazirX is available for the global audience.
Nischal is a passionate blockchain advocate. He has been active in the crypto space for a long time with the mission to make crypto accessible to everyone in India. Nischal has also been fighting for bringing positive crypto regulation in India with his renowned Twitter campaign called #IndiaWantsCrypto for over 1000 days.
He’s also a leading investor or advisor at several cutting-edge startups like EPNS, Wint Wealth, Invideo, Hypersign, Remtir spanning across diverse industries like Blockchain protocols, Lending, Finance, Video-tech, etc. Nischal is also serving as one of the Board of Directors at Zilliqa Capital, a blockchain investment company investing in India-focused FinTech, Open Finance, and Decentralized Finance solutions.
An early expert in the blockchain and cryptocurrency sector, Nischal has presented at various Indian and international conferences. He frequently shares his opinion on technology, innovations, and development on media platforms; he has also been featured on print, electronic and online media like Economic Times, CNBC, MoneyControl, Livemint, The Indian Express, NDTV, Cointelegraph, Coindesk, and many more. Nischal has also been featured in Forbes India ‘30 under 30’ list, and ET Inspiring CEOs list in the past.
