Unocoin raises $1.5 mn from Blume Ventures, others

Unocoin, a Bengaluru-based Bitcoin startup, has raised USD 1.5 million in funding from investors like Blume Ventures, Mumbai Angels and ah! Ventures.
International investors like Digital Currency Group, Boost VC, Bank to the Future and FundersClub also participated in the pre series-A round.
"We started from my small hometown called Tumkur near Bangalore and our goal from the beginning was to make it easy to get bitcoin in India. A few years later, we are now headquartered in Bangalore with 30-plus employees, serving more than 100,000 customers across the country and growing exponentially," Unocoin co-founder and CEO Sathvik Vishwanath said.

He added that given that India has huge inward remittance and technical prowess, it is a perfect home for Bitcoin and blockchain technology.
Bitcoin is a digital currency and payment network that uses open-source and peer-to-peer technology to operate with no central authority or banks.
The management of the transactions and bitcoins issuance are carried out collectively by the network.

The Reserve Bank of India has issued a warning against dealing in Bitcoin and other virtual currencies due to various risks, including those related to money-laundering and cyber security, as such digital currencies are not backed by any assets or monetary authorities.

However, RBI also appreciated the strengths of the underlying blockchain technology.
Previously, Unocoin had raised USD 250,000 (Rs 1.52 crore) in funding from SecondMarket founder Barry Silbert's Bitcoin Opportunity Corp.
"In Sathvik and team, we discovered not only the leading Bitcoin company in India, but a determination to educate all stakeholders, simplify Bitcoin's usage, and bring another frictionless layer to payments and commerce," Karthik Reddy from Blume Ventures said.
Unocoin has launched a merchant point-of-sale (POS) app, a mobile trading app and an auto-selling feature for remittance users among other features over the past year.