Coinbase appoints former Google Pay exec as head of India business

Cryptocurrency exchange platform Coinbase has appointed former Google Pay India engineering head Pankaj Gupta as its vice president and site lead for the country, effective May. 

Gupta confirmed the appointment in a series of tweets and a blog post. He is expected to build and lead Coinbase’s technology hub in India. The company is also hiring people across verticals in the country.   

Its first India office, the San Francisco, California-based company had said earlier, would come up in Hyderabad. 

Coinbase, which was recently listed on the Nasdaq, plans to acquire and acquihire startups in the country to build teams and functions.  

“India has world-class tech expertise and some of the brightest minds in the industry. Coinbase plans to tap and develop this local talent. 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,” Gupta said in the blog post. 

“Together, we’ll work on some of the most interesting challenges spanning the full modern tech stack — including deep tech areas like blockchains, data engineering, infrastructure, machine learning and more,” he added.  

Life Update!

After ~4 wonderful years leading Google Pay Engg in India and APAC, I am leaving Google at the end of this month.

How it all started?https://t.co/4MlB0eGPtd

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— Pankaj Gupta (@pankaj) April 21, 2021

“Coinbase is innovating at the frontier of crypto and blockchains — some of the most exciting trends in the world today. In my conversations with the Coinbase executive leadership, it became clear that this is an ambitious and mission focused company for builders like me,” he said. 

Although the company is setting up offices in the country now, Coinbase has been active investor in the Indian cryptocurrency market through startups such as CoinDCX.  

Coinbase co-founder Fred Ehrsam, who exited the company in 2017, had also backed cryptocurrency investment platform CoinSwitch Kuber through his investment firm Paradigm.