A clutch of angel investors, which included Polygon’s cofounder Sandeep Nailwal, DoorDash Inc.’s Gokul Rajaram, Aave’s Ajit Tripathi, also participated in the fundraising.
Coinbase Ventures, the investing arm of US-listed cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase Inc., has backed two crypto unicorns in India this year.
Founded in 2020, by Ramani Ramachandran, Shubham Singh, Chandan Choudhury and Priyeshu Garg, Router Protocol seeks to make cross-chain trading, lending and swap efficient and cost effective. The Singapore-headquartered company has a 20-member developer team that’s largely based in India.
The startup will utilise the funds to hire more developers and conduct security audits. It has announced partnerships with multiple protocols—Polygon, Avalanche, Terra, Algorand—and plans to launch its mainnet in the next few weeks.
“We are excited to have this dream team of investor partners,” CEO Ramachandran said. “Beyond just capital, all of these investors have been deeply involved—hands-on—in the design and development of Router as well as DFYN, as we look to build critical, scalable cross-blockchain infrastructure that is the need of the hour.”
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Dfyn is a decentralised exchange founded by the same team behind Router Protocol.
Router will make revenue from every transaction and will have both retail and institutional clients. Institutions clients would be able to use Router’s software development kit on any decentralised applications that require any cross-chain capability to seamlessly plug in to Router and enable cross-chain messaging and communication.
“Getting blockchains to communicate effectively with each other is the holy grail for DeFi going forward, and we are happy to work with the team behind Router & Dfyn and support their unique approach to solving this problem,” QCP Capital’s managing partner Darius Sit said.
Both Indian and international funds are making a beeline for blockchain and crypto startups founded by Indians, amid a market bull run and innovation in this space led by successful projects such as Polygon and Instadapp.