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CoinSwitch Kuber – the Indian crypto exchange – is in advanced talks to raise a new round of funding at up to $2 billion in valuation, as per a report by TechCrunch. This would make CoinSwitch the second Indian crypto startup to enter the unicorn club, after CoinDCX became the first in August 2021.

The report, which cited anonymous sources familiar with the developments, added the deal may finalise this month, and will be worth over $100 million.

When YourStory reached out to CoinSwitch, the startup declined to comment.

Among CoinSwitch’s existing investors are Tiger Global, Sequoia Capital India, and Ribbit Capital, which valued the crypto exchange at over $500 million in its Series B fundraising round.

CoinSwitch was founded in 2017 by Ashish Singhal, Govind Soni, and Vimal Sagar Tiwari in Bengaluru.

In April 2021, the platform had over 4.5 million users in India, and recorded $5 billion in transaction volume in March 2021. Since then, it has reportedly reached over seven million monthly active users. It competes with the likes of CoinDCX, ZebPay, WazirX, and Unocoin.

If the investment materialises, it will join CoinDCX as the only crypto unicorn from India. These talks come at a time when the government is reportedly planning to define crypto and compartmentalise virtual currencies on the basis of their use cases.

Earlier, it was thought the inter-ministerial panel on cryptocurrency under the Chairmanship of Secretary (Economic Affairs) to study the issues related to virtual currencies and propose specific actions had recommended that all private cryptocurrencies, except any virtual currencies issued by the state, will be prohibited in India.

These developments come against the backdrop of rising adoption of crypto in India. An August 2021 report by blockchain data platform Chainalysis ranked India second in terms of global crypto adoption in 2021, amidst global crypto adoption rising over 880 percent in the last year.