Coinbase’s India and EMEA product head Roshan Prabhakar says the company is prioritizing a fully onshore operation, local liquidity, direct INR payment rails and built-in compliance as it rebuilds its presence in India.

The onshore approach stands out in a market where international platforms have historically served Indian users from offshore, leaving them to handle many tax and compliance requirements themselves.

In an interview with Cryptopolitan, Prabhakar discussed his move from consulting and Flipkart’s payments business into crypto, the differences between India and other markets, changing user behavior, Coinbase’s India product strategy, security and the country’s potential to produce globally relevant Web3 protocols.

From BCG and Flipkart to Coinbase

Prabhakar began his career at Boston Consulting Group (BCG), followed by several consulting and product-related roles. He later joined Flipkart, where he spent most of his career working in payments and closely followed the team integrating the Unified Payments Interface (UPI) — India’s instant public payments system — as an asset rail at the Indian e-commerce company.

That experience gave him a close view of the broader fintech sector. He began reading more about crypto assets and following people working at Coinbase and other industry companies. Their posts about new products and developments increased his curiosity about the sector.

Prabhakar said Meta’s attempt to launch its own stablecoin — the Libra project, later renamed Diem — was a turning point in how closely he followed crypto. When Coinbase decided to expand in India, hire employees and build a local team, he decided to join the company.

He said Coinbase appeared to him to be a mature organization and “the adult in the room” amid the uncertainty surrounding the crypto industry. The company was also approaching its public listing — it went on to list on Nasdaq in April 2021 — which Prabhakar described as difficult to imagine for a crypto company at the time.

He said he viewed Coinbase as a leader in bringing crypto to a broader audience in a regulated, safe, secure and compliant way. His transition therefore moved from Flipkart and e-commerce to payments and then crypto.

Prabhakar said he has remained at Coinbase because Flipkart, fintech and crypto all belong to the broader consumer internet ecosystem, while presenting different and interesting problems to solve.

He has been part of Coinbase’s international expansion team for close to five years and now leads product for India and EMEA, covering Europe, the Middle East and Africa.

Building for India

According to Prabhakar, being genuinely local in a market requires allowing users to buy, sell and invest through local payment methods and fiat currencies. In many markets, particularly in Europe, fintech and payment-aggregator infrastructure is already well established. Connecting crypto services to card networks and local payment methods is therefore relatively straightforward, and crypto is generally treated similarly to other fintech services.

India requires a more customized model involving direct work with banks and other financial institutions. Functions handled by payment aggregators or third-party fintech companies in other markets often have to be managed directly by the exchange in India. That includes building downstream infrastructure and establishing local crypto liquidity.

Prabhakar said this requires a strong commitment to building locally. Coinbase’s decision to launch completely onshore in a handful of international markets was part of that commitment.

India also has a highly diverse user base. Some users may want to invest as little as ₹100 in crypto, while others are sophisticated traders. Serving the market requires balancing the needs of those different groups.

Indian consumers are also accustomed to high-quality fintech services, which makes them demanding users, Prabhakar said. That standard keeps Coinbase focused while operating in India.

At the same time, he sees similarities between India’s current development and the evolution of other markets. Some markets began with limited regulatory frameworks and later introduced anti-money-laundering (AML) rules, taxation requirements and other compliance obligations. Several eventually became highly sophisticated regulatory environments, including Europe, where comprehensive crypto regulations under the Markets in Crypto-Assets (MiCA) framework are now in place across all member countries.

Prabhakar said he clearly sees India following a similar trajectory. Coinbase can also draw lessons from EMEA and other markets in areas including consumer protection, custody and creating a safe, secure and trusted exchange experience.

Trading remains central as investment develops

India remains heavily focused on trading, although Prabhakar said new trends are emerging. The country is a major retail market for stocks, futures and options (F&O), and the trading behavior seen in those markets also appears in crypto.

India therefore has a larger population of sophisticated traders than many other markets, which Prabhakar described as one of the country’s distinctive characteristics.

However, he said an investment mindset is also developing. Equity mutual funds and the stock market have recorded strong systematic investment plan (SIP) inflows — recurring contributions into funds that have become a staple of Indian retail investing — reflecting rising investment activity. Indian investors are increasingly treating crypto as another asset class, and some of the investment behavior seen in stocks and other traditional assets is beginning to appear in crypto.

Prabhakar also said crypto protocols and technologies are increasingly moving into the background and becoming part of the financial plumbing that makes financial services more efficient.

Users may not ultimately think about choosing onchain financial services over another option. Instead, they may simply want to complete a task in the most cost-efficient, secure, simple and convenient way. The underlying technology matters less than whether it enables that outcome, he said.

Users may not care whether crypto or another technology powers a service behind the scenes. As crypto becomes more mainstream and supports financial infrastructure globally, Prabhakar expects those changes to become more visible.

India’s developer ecosystem

Prabhakar said India has long been one of the leading markets for developer talent. He cited recent reports suggesting that almost 12% of the global Web3 developer base is located in India and said the number of new developers is also growing significantly.

India has therefore been a developer hotbed for a long time, but the wider ecosystem is increasingly bringing developers together, helping them build skills and supporting their transition from individual developers into entrepreneurs and startup founders.

Prabhakar said individual developers are increasingly founding startups and building foundational components and products with real-world utility using Web3 as the underlying technology. He described India’s development as moving in both directions: the country continues to supply talent while also becoming a place where products and protocols are created.

He said a more detailed discussion of developer support would be better directed to Saumya Saxena, whom he described as doing significant work supporting the developer ecosystem in India and globally.

Coinbase’s onshore relaunch

Coinbase’s first India launch in 2022 encountered difficulties. That launch initially allowed users to buy crypto through UPI, but the option was switched off within days after the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI), which operates the payment system, said it was not aware of any crypto exchange using it. For its subsequent relaunch in June, the company spent close to a year building before going live.

Prabhakar said the current approach is based on establishing a genuinely onshore operation. Coinbase wants to operate as another Indian crypto trading exchange rather than as an offshore business.

The company began by establishing a local entity and registering it with the Financial Intelligence Unit (FIU), with which crypto service providers have been required to register under India’s anti-money-laundering framework since 2023. Prabhakar emphasized that the operation is completely local and fully onshore.

That approach required Coinbase to build much of its infrastructure from the ground up. The company’s priorities included establishing the local entity, meeting local compliance requirements, building local liquidity and integrating local payment rails before taking its products to market.

Coinbase took more than a year after its FIU registration to launch INR trading in India. Prabhakar said the company wanted to establish the foundations before introducing the product and believes the approach is working well so far. How quickly the platform broadens token coverage, ships INR-first products and extends its asset classes — and how India’s regulatory posture evolves — will be the markers to watch as the relaunch matures.

An INR-first “Everything Exchange”

One of Coinbase’s main priorities is to become as local as possible, including making every part of the user experience as INR-first as possible. That means offering a complete product suite with appropriate local liquidity through a fully compliant onshore operation, while making the products feel local in every respect.

Coinbase began with INR order books and local liquidity and is gradually expanding that support to more tokens. It is also working to build more INR-first products.

A second priority follows Coinbase’s global philosophy of becoming an “Everything Exchange,” bringing multiple asset classes to the same users on a single platform. In India, the company wants to offer access to as many asset classes as possible in a regulated and compliant manner, subject to local regulations.

Prabhakar said Coinbase aims to bring suitable products available globally on its platform to India wherever possible. He cited the company’s recent launch, or global offering, of crypto options as an example of the type of product that could be considered for the Indian market.

For Prabhakar, success would mean that a serious Indian investor or trader chooses Coinbase first because it is trusted, safe, secure and easy to use. The company regularly gathers customer feedback, studies what works and what does not, and monitors the local regulatory environment to ensure compliance does not become an unnecessary burden for users.

He said security and safety remain central. If Coinbase becomes the first-choice trading platform and exchange for serious Indian investors and traders in the coming years, he would consider that a success.

Direct INR payment rails

Coinbase chose to build direct INR rails and integrate deeply with India’s payments infrastructure rather than rely on a chain of intermediaries for deposits and withdrawals.

Prabhakar said fewer intermediaries can make the experience more reliable and less expensive, although the approach requires Coinbase to invest substantial effort in building the underlying infrastructure. The company believes that effort is justified because it can produce reliable systems and a better experience for users depositing and withdrawing funds.

The approach also addresses the requirements of banking partners. Coinbase seeks to operate in a way that is as compliant as possible and incorporates its partners’ regulatory and compliance requirements into its systems in-house to the extent possible. Prabhakar said the company would have less flexibility when relying on intermediaries.

The objective is to provide an experience that is compliant, easy to use, reliable and cost-effective. Coinbase is trading the additional work involved in building the systems itself for what it considers a more sustainable product.

In many countries, established fintech intermediaries provide payment infrastructure to crypto companies, and existing card networks can often facilitate crypto transactions. India is different because banks, payment providers and other financial institutions have multiple considerations when serving crypto businesses. That caution has a history: the Reserve Bank of India barred regulated lenders from providing services to crypto businesses in 2018, and although the Supreme Court set that circular aside in 2020, banking relationships for crypto firms have remained sensitive in the years since.

Coinbase therefore has to build what a bank or payment provider needs in order to feel comfortable providing services to a crypto exchange.

Making tax compliance part of the product

India introduced a flat 30% tax on crypto income and a 1% tax deducted at source on virtual digital asset transfers in 2022. Every applicable trade must handle tax deducted at source (TDS) and goods and services tax (GST) in rupees. Prabhakar said Coinbase’s foundational principle is that users should not have to carry the burden of compliance.

On many offshore trading platforms, users ultimately have to manage compliance themselves because the platform does not handle every requirement. Coinbase instead wants to give users peace of mind by doing the heavy lifting internally.

The company’s user-experience approach has two parts. Compliance should be invisible wherever possible, but visible whenever necessary, particularly when users need to understand its effect.

TDS calculations can involve several variables, including how to value a primary token, how to value a secondary crypto token and which time-based valuation should be used to calculate its INR equivalent and the TDS amount. Rules can also differ according to a user’s bank account, tax residency status and other criteria. As a result, the amount of TDS can vary between users.

Coinbase seeks to abstract that complexity from users and handle the calculations and related compliance requirements within its systems. Users can execute trades while Coinbase manages the tax calculations.

At the same time, Prabhakar said transparency is equally important. The company is willing to accept a lower immediate conversion rate from a new user if that means the user clearly understands the transaction.

When users deposit INR or go through the trading process, Coinbase explains the applicable laws and regulations and how it handles the requirements. The platform also provides visibility into fees. When a user attempts to buy crypto, Coinbase displays the total fee and provides access to a detailed breakdown showing the tax charged, why it applies and how it was calculated.

Prabhakar said Coinbase could hide those details to encourage users to complete a trade, but the company prefers users to trade after understanding what they are doing. It would rather have a user wait than push someone into completing a transaction without sufficient information.

That approach reflects Coinbase’s intention to operate in each market for the long term. Prabhakar said building trust over time is more important than getting a user to complete a first trade as quickly as possible.

Security and the “go slow to be fast” approach

Asked how Coinbase balances product development with security after breaches have affected even large platforms, Prabhakar said the company follows the philosophy of “go slow to be fast.” Moving artificially quickly can cause more problems and ultimately create further delays.

Coinbase is deliberately comfortable slowing down when necessary, particularly when launching something for the first time. The company wants to get the foundations right and then scale more quickly once the system is working properly.

Prabhakar said Coinbase generally favors being deliberately slow at the beginning so that it can scale more effectively later.

He also said the advancement of artificial intelligence capabilities is rapidly changing the security landscape and that Coinbase continues to invest in best-in-class security innovation.

Coinbase said it is considered the most trusted platform in the industry and that it safeguards more crypto than any other company. The company is also the primary custodian for the majority of spot Bitcoin exchange-traded funds (ETFs), while more than 150 government agencies trust Coinbase as a partner.

Coinbase said it keeps more than 99% of customer assets in cold storage and rebalances funds into and out of hot wallets according to customer deposits and withdrawal demand. Transfers are protected by layers of controls, including distributed keys, withdrawal limits, anomaly detection and kill switches that can halt sign-ins.

Building globally relevant protocols in India

India has one of the world’s largest and fastest-growing crypto developer bases and leads globally in adoption — a position reflected in Chainalysis’ Global Crypto Adoption Index, which has placed India first in recent years. However, many Indian-founded projects are headquartered in Dubai or Singapore, meaning the code may be developed in India while value is captured elsewhere.

Coinbase has invested more than $1 million in India’s builder community through Base, the exchange’s Ethereum layer-2 network. Prabhakar said the future of India’s developer ecosystem will depend on returning to the fundamentals of identifying important problems and solving them.

Many crypto projects are becoming more infrastructure-focused instead of directly consumer-facing. For Indian developers, crypto startups and protocol builders, the priority should be to identify the right problems and address them.

Protocols are intended to serve a broad audience and operate at scale. Prabhakar pointed to several foundational use cases already emerging, including activity around agentic finance. Some protocols are helping people monetize data contributed to the training of large language models (LLMs), allowing contributors to receive returns for that contribution.

Many such solutions are designed to operate globally, without regard to geographical boundaries. Prabhakar said the central question is therefore not simply where value is created or captured, but whether a project is being built because it sounds exciting or because it addresses a foundational or universal problem with global relevance.

As long as Indian developers and the broader ecosystem continue to focus on meaningful use cases and foundational problems, he sees no reason the country’s developer ecosystem and new protocols cannot continue to flourish in India.

Source: Cryptopolitan