Coinbase lays off 8% of its India workforce, hires executive for local partnerships

Mumbai: Over the last two months US-based Coinbase went from its ambitious target of tripling its workforce in India to laying off 8% of its workforce in the country. The largest crypto exchange in the US which
launched its exchange services in India in April has laid off 8% of its employees, its vice president of engineering, Pankaj Gupta said on Twitter on Wednesday.

This comes after its founder and CEO Brian Armstrong said on Tuesday that the company was
laying off 18% (about 1,100) of its employees amid worsening macroeconomic conditions.

“Due to ongoing macroeconomic conditions, we made the difficult decision to reduce around 18% of Coinbase’s global workforce. Although this did impact our India hub, the cuts were much lower than the global average. Approximately 8% of our India team was unfortunately affected,” Gupta wrote.

Gupta added that despite the current environment, India will remain among its ‘top market priorities’ where it will continue to invest in product and engineering teams.

Its recent hire, senior director for market expansion
Durgesh Kaushik, former Snap India head, said the company had hired Arnab Kumar as director of India Market Expansion “ to start building foundational partnerships and operations in the country.”

Kumar was India’s director of strategy and fintech at Prosus and has also worked at the policy think tank of the Government of India Niti Ayog.

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