Despite uncertainty surrounding cryptocurrency regulation in India, Coinbase — the largest cryptocurrency exchange in the United States — is stepping up its expansion plans in the world’s second-most populous country and home to fast-growing projects such as Polygon and Instadapp.
Fast facts
- Coinbase is looking to build out its India tech hub, which was announced in March, by hiring “hundreds of world-class engineers in the near term” across its infrastructure, cloud, platform, payments, crypto, blockchain, data engineering, machine learning, growth, and product engineering teams, and for its product and design teams, according to a blog post by Pankaj Gupta, Coinbase’s vice-president of engineering and site lead in India.
- “It is early days for our India tech hub but it has already taken off with an incredible amount of interest in our open roles from across India,” Gupta wrote.
- The company is also exploring startup acquisitions and “acquihires” as part of its growth plans, Gupta wrote.
- With many crypto companies closing investment rounds in recent months in an effort to recruit top talent to support their expansion plans, the competition for candidates has been heating up.
- Gupta says Coinbase intends to hire “from all parts of India in order to find the best talent wherever they are or choose to work from in the country,” and provide a hybrid work environment with physical offices in key cities. “In addition to the challenging and meaningful work, we also provide top-tier perks and compensation, which allows us to ensure we have top talent in every seat across the company,” Gupta wrote.
- To help new employees learn more about crypto, Coinbase is offering them a one-time US$1,000 payment in crypto when they start as part of its new “CIkka” program — short for “Coinbase India Sikka”. “Sikka” means “coin” in many languages in India.
- Following its Nasdaq listing on April 14, Coinbase began calling itself a “remote-first” company, and it has been actively hiring in the U.S., the UK, Ireland, Japan, Singapore, Canada and the Philippines, in addition to building its presence in India.