Coinbase to More Than Triple India Headcount This Year

(Bloomberg) -- Coinbase Global Inc., the U.S. cryptocurrency exchange operator, plans to more than triple its number of employees in India this year to around 1,000, according to Chief Executive Officer Brian Armstrong.

India will be Coinbase's technology hub to develop global products and half of the new hires will be engineers, added Pankaj Gupta, the company's India site head. The South Asian nation will account for a quarter of the total 2,000 people Coinbase plans to hire across product, engineering and design in 2022.

“Last year we decided India is going to be a huge place,” Gupta said. “We understand the complexity of Indian market. It's a place with a lot of potential.”

Coinbase's expansion plans in India come against the backdrop of a backlash among local competitors against a draconian new taxation regime. The government is imposing a 1% tax deductible at source, or TDS, on all digital-asset transfers above a certain size -- a move executives have warned will deprive the market of much-needed liquidity.

“We are going to invest for the long term in India,” Armstrong said.

India, with an estimated 15 million active crypto users, has been stuck in regulatory limbo since the Supreme Court in 2020 overturned a central bank directive banning regulated entities from working with digital-assets companies.

Armstrong, speaking at a Coinbase conference in the tech hub of Bengaluru, also said customers can now use the Unified Payments Interface, the nationwide quick-payments network, to directly purchase cryptocurrencies on its exchange.

National Payments Corporation of India, which runs UPI, said in a statement it is “not aware of any crypto exchange using UPI.” An email seeking comment from Coinbase wasn't immediately answered outside of business hours in Bengaluru.