CoinDCX Ventures, the investment arm of the crypto unicorn CoinDCX plans to deploy ₹50 crore in 2023. The fund is eyeing investments in scalable platforms, developer tools, and decentralised finance (Defi) among other existing investment themes, said its MD Rohit Jain.
In an interaction with businessilne, Jain said: “We are looking at start-ups that can solve the problem statement of scalability as the adoption of Web 3 by masses would increase. The fund is also looking at the developer tools, which would enable Web3 developers.”
We are also very bullish on the Defi space as it still has a lot of scope for innovation, he added.
The fund is also looking at start-ups that can provide simpler Web 2 platform-like user experience on a Web 3 platform. “We are excited about usability as a use case as a user of a Web 3 platform still has to be aware of the infrastructure and can’t get a one-click experience that majority of Web 2 platforms have,” Jain said.
CoinDCX Ventures has earlier invested in Gamefi and centralised exchanges.
The fund was set up in May 2022 and had earmarked ₹100 crore for deployment. It makes early-stage and Series-A level investments in Web 3 start-ups across the world. So far, it has invested over 25 per cent of the fund in 13 start-ups across segments and geographies. 40 per cent of the investments are made in India and 60 per cent in other geographies globally.
Amidst the crypto bear market, Jain opines, “The noise to signal ratio has gone down as a lot of non-serious start-ups are not able to raise funds now. Now, we see a lot of committed teams continue to build and solve problems.”
In addition, valuations have also become much more reasonable. The valuations which were inflated in the bull market are now a lot more grounded, he added.