Business
We are creating a simplified investing ecosystem: Crypto unicorn CoinSwitch
Crypto is an emerging yet attractive asset class. It is a $1.25 trillion market globally. The India adoption story is no different with nearly 20 million unique users, over $6.6 billion in investments and more than a billion dollars in venture capital funding.
India is already the second-largest in terms of crypto adoption globally.
Crypto in India has come a long way but this is just the beginning — Crypto is a billion people industry in the making.
Govind Soni, Co-Founder and Chief Technology Officer, CoinSwitch, India’s largest crypto investing app, told IANS that their priority is to make it transparent, trustworthy and secure, and enable Indians to participate in this technology shift in a meaningful way.
Excerpts from the interview:
Q: Why is Crypto important, and how can India benefit from it?
A: Crypto is the gateway to a decentralised internet. The computing power of the billions of devices around the world can be utilised and incentivised using Crypto to build a new internet, called Web3.
India has the opportunity to take the lead in this transformation. We have the talent, users and the startup ecosystem. And we are witnessing an upskilling and migration of India’s large pool of engineers and developers to the cutting-edge and advanced field of blockchain and crypto.
All this puts India in a sweet spot. With an enabling regulatory environment, India can get a headstart and steer the direction of Web3 while it is built.
Q: Crypto has come a long way. Every day we hear news that even Wall Street giants are adopting Crypto. Why is that?
A: Institutional adoption is a sign that Crypto has well and truly grown beyond white papers to be a smart investment class. The origin of Crypto may have been based on an idea of a digital currency, but now it has evolved to become an attractive, emerging asset class.
There are several interesting use-cases being built on this technology. That is the intrinsic value of Crypto: The confidence and uptake of the underlying blockchain technology. Institutional investors understand this and have done their due diligence.
While retail investors continue to be the early adopters and torchbearers of Cryptos, growing institutional adoption underlines the fact that this is an asset class that is here to stay.
Even traditional markets are adopting and gaining exposure to Cryptos. All of this bodes well for the growth of the asset class.
Q: What about India? There is regulatory uncertainty on Crypto here. Do you see this changing and Crypto becoming a mainstream asset class here?
A: Certainly. Cryptos are an emerging asset class that speak to India’s digital-savvy population.
With regulatory clarity, institutional investors too will find the confidence to invest in and benefit from Cryptos.
As we have seen globally, Cryptos can attract significant institutional and foreign investments if regulations can enable innovations and provide the necessary guardrails. India can benefit similarly.
Innovations such as decentralised finance, or DeFi, can be an effective and fast enabler of capital for small and medium-scale businesses in India. Crypto is also paving the way for interesting applications such as decentralized social media that Indians can greatly benefit from.
Q: How is CoinSwitch protecting investors on its platform?
A: At CoinSwitch, investor protection is of utmost importance to us. While we have been using various digital platforms to inform, educate and engage with new crypto enthusiasts, we are continuously updating our app to help users make informed investing decisions.
And, numbers tell the story. The average time a user spends on our app reading, buying, selling, or trading has gone up to 27 minutes from 13 minutes in January 2021.
In line with our ongoing product feature upgrades to tighten platform security, we have launched Riskometer — our attempt to help users think twice before investing in a coin. The Riskometer provides a risk warning on coins that are highly volatile, or when the risk assessment suggests that users need to proceed with caution while investing.
We understand that ensuring compliance with relevant regulations is key to ensuring a safe, secure, and trustworthy user experience. Users on our platform can utilise their account balances (of Indian Rupees and crypto assets) to only transact on our platform or withdraw Indian Rupees. They can only deposit Indian Rupees from their verified bank account. Similarly, after selling crypto assets, users can withdraw Indian Rupees only to their verified bank account.
Q: What does cloud technology enable you to do better?
A: Amazon Web Services (AWS) allows to scale up on infrastructure and services without having any dependencies, or minimum usage commitments. AWS continues to make incremental improvements to its solutions and services, allowing us to easily deliver value to our customers. If we had to build these capabilities on our own it would have taken us significantly longer. With the shared responsibility model, security of the cloud is addressed by AWS and this helps us considerably reduce our efforts towards security and compliance. AWS account team and Enterprise Support provides proactive guidance and support as we scale our platforms. AWS is the easy answer for any internet-based ecosystem that wants to scale faster.
CoinSwitch is trusted by over 18 million registered users, making it the largest crypto investing app in India. Ours is a built-to-scale platform developed on top of AWS. Among a host of things, AWS has improved our time to market, handle spikes in traffic, and manage risks more efficiently. All of these put together help us provide a simplified and secure user experience on the app.
Business
India Set To Lead The World In 6G, Says Telecom Minister Jyotiraditya Scindia
In a bold declaration at the inaugural address of the Indian Mobile Congress 2024 (IMC) on Tuesday, Union Telecom Minister Jyotiraditya M. Scindia has said that India will lead the world in the adoption of 6G.
In his address at the event, Scindia emphasized that India is now prepared to lead the world in the development of 6G technology.
India’s Technological Rise: From Following to Leading
“It is our belief and commitment that India, which followed the world in 4G and marched with it in 5G, will lead the world in 6G,” Scindia stated.
The minister highlighted India’s remarkable achievements in the telecommunications sector over the last ten years, the country has become a global leader in innovation and technology.
“It’s a fundamental change in approach towards technology development,” he said, attributing this transformation to Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s leadership.
Telecom Sector Growth Under PM Modi’s Leadership
“Prime Minister who has always put people at the heart of progress Sabka Sath, Sabka Vikas Sabka Vishvas aur Sabka Prayas combined with his second motto, One Earth, One Family and One Future. It is combination of these two mottos that leads India under PM Narendra Modi leadership one of the leading sectors in the committee of Nations,” Scindia said.
Scindia underscored government’s initiatives to bridge the digital divide, particularly through the BharatNet program, the world’s largest rural broadband connectivity initiative to connect every panchayat of the nation. Over the past three years, the government has invested more than USD 10 billion and laid 7 lakh kilometres of fiber across rural India.
Digital Payments and UPI: Pillars of India’s Digital Economy
He cited staggering growth in mobile and broadband connectivity, with mobile connections rising from 94 million to 1.16 billion, and broadband users growing from 60 million to 924 million in just a decade. India’s optical fibre cable (OFC) networks has expanded from 11 million kilometers to 41 million kilometres over the last ten years, he added.
The minister further said that this growth is accompanied by the success of India’s digital payment systems, the 4G stack, and the Unified Payments Interface (UPI), which serve as pillars of India’s digital economy are expected to contribute significantly to the global digital infrastructure.
Scindia further noted that the government’s efforts to ensure that policy frameworks keep pace with the rapidly evolving digital landscape. “The recent changes to the Telecommunications act 2023 is a case in point. It has been drawing light upon hither to undressed areas such as a high potential sector of satellite communications, addressing the challenges of the digital leader. The most important being cyber security. The telecom sector much like other growth critical sectors in India is aggressive, is ambitioushe said.
“The telecom sector much like other growth critical sectors in India is aggressive, is ambitious and its outlook in our Journey from Amritkal to Shatabdikal is to lead the world,” Scindia said. By mid-next year, India will have achieved 100 per cent saturation of 4G across the entire country, covering even the most remote villages, the minister said.
He emphasised PM Modi’s vision of India as a first mover in 6G technology, underscoring the nation’s resolve to lead the world in future telecom innovations.
“The attitude put forward by the prime minister of not just embracing, but raising ourselves to becoming the first mover in the 6G technology,” he added.
Business
Indian Markets Gave Better Returns Than China In Last 5 Years, Says Sebi Member
Sebi Whole-time Member Ananth Narayan G on Monday reminded investors that Indian equities have consistently delivered 15 per cent returns over the last 5 years whereas the same has been zero or even negative in China.
Terming the Indian markets “sone pe suhaga” for delivering higher returns for lower risks, Narayan also flagged a few areas of caution for investors and asked them to be conscious of the risks.
“There’s a lot of talk about China markets over the last few days. But over the last five years, while Indian markets have given around 15 per cent compound annual growth rate consistently, Chinese markets are nowhere close to that. It’s almost zero. In fact, in some cases, like in Hong Kong, it’s actually negative,” Narayan said.
Speaking at an event marking the start of the Investor Awareness Week at NSE, Narayan said FY24 was a “remarkable” year for India, with the benchmark indices returning 28 per cent and the volatility just 10 per cent.
“That’s like ‘sone pe suhaga’. It’s like the best of all worlds: low risk and very high return,” Narayan said, underlining that there are side effects of this as well.
Making it clear that it will not be the same going forward and investors should not assume it to be a one-way street, Narayan said such handsome returns can lead to complacency and pointed to a lot of youngsters opening up demat accounts to join the bandwagon.
Educating people about risks is very important, Narayan said, giving the analogy of driving a car. “There has to be a light push on the accelerator to get more investors to provide risk capital for the economic growth, we also need to be aware of risks and use the brakes if need be.” He said that 40 per cent of the small and midcap scrips have shot up by 5 times in the last five years, because of an imbalance between inflow of investor money and supply of new paper.
On its part, the capital markets regulator is trying hard to ensure that fund-raising clearances are done early so that there is a steady stream of quality paper supply in the market.
From a broader, longer-term perspective, Indian markets will only go north from here given the economic growth prospects in the country, Narayan said, issuing specific advice to investors.
Investors need to have the right intermediaries to capitalise on this opportunity presented by India, and not fall for the unregistered and fly-by-night ‘finfluencers’ who might be driven by vested interests, he said.
Using the oft-repeated idiom of “all roads lead to Rome”, Narayan remarked that Rome is not a traveller-friendly place and one may get scammed there as well. Therefore, it is important to seek advice from the right people for the investors, he said.
He also said that it is in investors’ interests to trade less and stay invested for longer for higher returns, and added that studies prove the same.
Sebi, which has flagged certain areas like derivatives recently, is not against speculation or participants taking short-term trades, but it would want investors to understand the risks, Narayan said.
Business
Ratan Tata Rubbishes Rumors Of ‘Critical Health’; Says No Cause For Concern
Tata Group’s Ratan Tata has denied rumours of his critical health that have been reported and have surfaced in the recent hours.
Ratan Tata’s associates took to his official Instagram account to debunk the news of him being ‘Critical’.
In the post, Ratan Tata said, “I am aware of recent rumors circulating regarding my health and want to assure everyone that these claims are unfounded. I am currently undergoing medical check-ups due to my age and related medical conditions.
There is no cause for concern. I remain in good spirits and request that the public and media respect refrain from spreading misinformation.
For more than fifty years, Ratan Tata has led the Indian business community’s entrance hall. The 86-year-old has been suffering from illnesses associated with ageing. Tata has participated in social life to the best of his limited ability despite his health issues.
Recently, on the occasion of Gandhi Jayanti, on October 2, Ratan Tata, expressed his congratulations to the Prime Minister on this occasion. “I congratulate the honourable Prime Minister on the 10-year commemoration of programmes that have benefitted millions in rural India.”
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