Indian Bitcoin market seems to growing. Recently, Coinsecure, the leading Indian Bitcoin trading platform, announced that it has secured $1.2 million as part of its ongoing ‘Series A’ investment round, opened in January this year.

According to latest reports, yet another bitcoin exchange in the country, Zebpay, has crossed INR 100 crore turnover in just 10 months of its operation on the back of rising popularity of the digital currency in India, The Economic Times reported.

Saurabh Agrawal, Zebpay cofounder, said that the startup launched in July last year and crossed INR 100-crore turnover on April 15.

"While HNIs [high net-worth individuals] are buying bitcoin as investment, freelancers are more into using it as remittance and trading," said Sandeep Goenka, cofounder of Zebpay. 

Goenka added that freelancers have started accepting bitcoins as payment from their overseas customers. “By receiving payments in bitcoin, they save the high fee of 5-15% charged by remittance companies”, he said and added that these users sell bitcoins they receive on Zebpay to convert them into Indian rupee.

It was widely reported in January that Zebpay raised $1 million in Series-A funding from growth equity investors Arjun Handa, chairman and managing director at Claris Lifesciences, and Amit Jindal, managing director at Jindal Worldwide. 

Indian Bitcoin Scene

Bitcoin use in India is gradually picking up. Several bitcoin startups have been set up including BTCXIndia, Unocoin, Zebpay and Coinsecure.

In 2013, the country’s central bank said that it does not authorize using digital currencies as a medium for payment. However, last year Raghuram Rajan, Governor of Reserve Bank of India (RBI), said that though the central bank has not intervened in the cryptocurrency space, it is carefully watching the area. In addition, RBI Deputy Governor SS Mundra stressed the need to regulate cryptocurrency market in the country.

Despite this, the number of bitcoin users is on the rise. According to latest estimates from India Bitcoin, Zebpay currently has a total of over 50,000 users and around 3,000 to 4,000 new users are added every month. Going month-on-month at 75-100% growth, it is targeting business of INR 500 crore by end of this year with a user base of 100,000 downloads.

Unocoin currently has over 60,000 users, as compared to 20,000 users as of September 2015. In fact, Unocoin became the first Indian Bitcoin start-up to be funded internationally in August 2014 with an investment of US$250,000 from legendary investor Barry Silbert.