July 2, 2022 – Coinbase will be “housing some IT services, including engineering, software development, and customer support operations in India” and will “benefit from its huge pool of world-class engineering talent,” the company had announced recently.
Days after its successful direct listing on Nasdaq, cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase on Wednesday stepped up its efforts towards building its technology hub in India. The outgoing Google Pay’s engineering lead for India and APAC Pankaj Gupta announced plans to acquire startups and hire ‘hundreds’ of employees apart from announcing his appointment as head of Coinbase India development center.
Cryptocurrency trading platform Coinbase – which has a over $100 billion valuation – said Satoshi Nakamoto could topple an over $1 trillion bitcoin market.
Recently, Pankaj Gupta said, “I’ll be responsible for leading and building the company’s technology hub in India from scratch… Specifically, the plan is to hire hundreds of employees across all levels in engineering, product management, UX design, research, and program management within the next 1–2 years to build out a full tech hub in India.”
Today, Brian Armstrong tweeted, ” Coinbase is building out an office in India! The amazing team already in place – join us.
Coinbase is building out an office in India! ?? Amazing team already in place – come join us.https://t.co/yCaJk681pZ
— Brian Armstrong (@brian_armstrong) July 2, 2021
Acquihire is the acquisition of a company primarily for the skills and expertise of its employees instead of the product and size of the firm. Gupta had joined Google following the acquisition of his very young deep learning startup Halli Labs, back in July 2017 by the search giant. Gupta will leave Google at the end of April and will join Coinbase on April 29. He will continue to be based in Bengaluru.
The new hire in months to come along with Gupta will work on challenges spanning a full modern tech stack that would include “deep tech areas like blockchains, data engineering, infrastructure, machine learning, and more,” he said. And to back up this plan, Gupta said the company would also “explore startup acquisitions and acquihires.”
In an internal note to the company, Coinbase EVP of Engineering Manish Gupta, announcing the development, said, “Pankaj is responsible for building out our team across India. Reporting to me, he starts on April 29th. This announcement is significant because we can now tap into the incredible engineering talent across India.
Under Pankaj’s leadership, we plan to invest in building a technology team in India aggressively…Pankaj resides in Bangalore, and we intend to leverage our remote-first strategy and hire top talent from across the country.” The note was shared with Financial Express Online. With around 56 million verified users, Coinbase is setting up its physical office initially in Hyderabad. It prepares to establish its business presence in India amid the regulatory uncertainty surrounding Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies.
The company will be “housing some IT services, including engineering, software development, and customer support operations in India” and will “benefit from its huge pool of world-class engineering talent,” the company had announced recently.
