Crypto firm CoinSwitch laid-off 44 employees due to redundancy in customer support team

CoinSwitch, a platform for crypto assets, has terminated 44 employees due to redundancy in the customer support department. The Bengaluru-based company has just experienced its first layoff.

A CoinSwitch spokesperson said, “…we right-sized our customer support team to align with the present volume of customer queries on our platform. This impacted the roles of 44 members of our customer support team, who voluntarily resigned from their roles after a detailed discussion with their managers earlier this month.”

There were also layoffs in the operations team, according to Moneycontrol, which broke the news of the development first. The CoinSwitch representative did add that there isn’t a separate operations team for the company’s virtual digital asset business.

Ashish Singhal, Govind Soni, and Vimal Sagar founded CoinSwitch in 2017, and in June 2020 it began operating in India. CoinSwitch is a global aggregator of cryptocurrency exchanges. One of the most well-funded businesses in the industry is CoinSwitch. To become a unicorn, the company raised $260 million in a Series C funding round from investors including Coinbase Ventures, Andreessen Horowitz (a16z), and others. Over $400 million have been raised in three funding rounds.

The Enforcement Directorate conducted a raid on the CoinSwitch offices in August of last year due to alleged violations of the Foreign Exchange Management Act. Along with WazirX and CoinDCX, the government agency also raided other cryptocurrency businesses.

Another unicorn cryptocurrency company, CoinDCX, let go 71 workers last week, blaming the protracted bear market and TDS’s effect on domestic exchanges. In 2023, numerous companies, including Coinbase, Polygon, Genesis Global Trading, Dapper Labs, and Messari, experienced massive layoffs.

Although the Indian government does not have a ban on cryptocurrencies, the increased regulatory scrutiny and high taxes have made it challenging for investors to support startups that are crypto-focused.

During the most recent Group of 20 (G20) summit, Prime Minister Narendra Modi also called for international cooperation in developing crypto regulations.