Coinbase has hired Durgesh Kaushik, who is leaving his role as the director of India and South Asia market development at Snapchat India.
The Nasdaq-listed cryptocurrency exchange decided to bring Kaushik on-board to lead the company’s growth in emerging markets like India.
In a statement, Nana Murugesan, Vice-President of International, Business Development and Partnerships at Coinbase, said: “We’re excited to confirm that Durgesh Kaushik will be joining Coinbase on May 9 as our Senior Director for Market Expansion.”
As reported, Kaushik will be responsible for the company’s debut in India, as well as many other markets in Asia Pacific, Africa, Europe, the Middle East and the Americas.
Kaushik was with Facebook, which is now under the umbrella of Meta Platform. He also joined Jio Young Leadership Program. At Reliance Jio, he headed the social media strategy section.
He was part of the executive leadership team at Edureka.
Kaushik co-founded a Bengaluru-based social video platform, called Whishfie, and later became part of hyperlocal delivery service Dunzo’s executive team.
COINBASE AND INDIA
According to Murugesan, “Kaushik’s appointment to this global leadership role is an important step towards our entry in India, as well as our mission to increase economic freedom around the world.”
“Beyond his initial focus on our India launch, Durgesh will draw from his extensive experience to also support our entry into other markets in APAC, EMEA, and the Americas as laid out in our recent blog post on our global expansion strategy,” he added .
In India, Coinbase was looking for several top positions, including a regional managing director, according to previous reports.
Coinbase’s co-founder Brian Armstrong said on April 4 that the company wants to quadruple its employee base in India to 1,000 and continue investing in web3 firms.
Coinbase Ventures, the company’s corporate venture arm, has invested $150 million in Indian web3 firms CoinDCX and CoinSwitch Kuber.
The company began offering trading services in India on April 7. But after an informal crackdown by the National Payments Corporation of India on crypto exchanges using the Unified Payments Interface as a mechanism to buy crypto in India, the company had to suspend trading services in India three days later.
SNAP INC’S INDIA TEAM
As Kaushik is leaving, Lakshya Malu, the company’s manager of marketing development, will serve as the interim head.
Snap said, “Durgesh played an integral role in setting up the local office in 2019 and driving strategic expansion and growth efforts over the years.”
As part of its growing focus on India, Snap Inc, the parent company of ephemeral messaging service Snapchat, has made major hiring for its growth, advertising partnerships and augmented reality teams.
Malu reportedly stated that Snap’s translation and engagement efforts in India have been highly appreciated by our community, advertising partners and creators over the past few years.
“Durgesh helped build this foundation and we are excited to continue our growth momentum with our new Indian colleagues Gaurav, Aishwarya, Vikash, Sachit, Hardik and Satyajit,” he added.
However, Gaurav Jain (previously in Meta), Aishwarya Rao (previously in Meta), Vikas Pandey (previously in ByteDance), Sachit Prakash, Hardik Shah, Satyajit Swain, and Ragini Verma are among the new hires.
Jain has been appointed as the new head of APAC business expansion, while Rao and Pandey have been appointed as global business expansion leads. Additionally, Prakash has been appointed as a global business expansion associate.
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