Singapore’s Vauld secures $2 mn to expand Indian operations

By Megha Bhattacharya

Vauld, a Singapore-based crypto lending platform has raised $2 million or 15 crores INR of capital with an aim to expand operations in India and abroad. The funding round saw the participation of Pantera Capital, Coinbase Ventures, CMT digital, Gumi Cryptos Capital, LuneX Ventures, Robert Leshner (CEO of Compound Finance) and Tarun Chaitra’s Robot Ventures, CoinShares, Better Capital, New Form Capital, Jesus Rodrigues (the CEO of IntoTheBlock) and others.

“We finally see institutional capital come into India’s fintech ecosystem with the expectation of banking integrations that complement existing crypto credit offerings.” highlighted Darshan Bathija, CEO, Vauld. “We also look forward to closely working with the commodities and banking regulators in the country and ensure our partners are and remain fully compliant through the changing regulatory landscape.”

Vauld stated that the funding will help it expand from an India-focussed crypto platform to a DEFI platform comprising payments, credit and trading. The round follows the company’s earlier investment round of $500k from Singapore’s LuneX Ventures, as well as a few India-based angel investors in June.

According to Sanju Sony Kurian, Vauld’s Co-founder and CTO, the company plans to double down on engineering talent and opening offices across the country.

Vauld currently plans to launch out an OTC trade desk, fiat and crypto order books and international debit/credit cards. The company is a crypto bank and exchange aiming to strengthen its position in the crypto lending and crypto borrowing solutions market. It enables customers to lend, borrow and trade their crypto assets from one unified platform.

“Vauld’s vision to make cryptocurrency the preferred instrument of banking by making it simple to use and interoperable with the current banking infrastructure is what we are excited about” said Paul Veradittakit, Partner at Pantera Capital.