India’s growing cryptocurrency ecosystem has drawn global attention, with the country ranking first in the 2025 Global Crypto Adoption Index published by Chainalysis.

The rise reflects increasing retail participation, expanding trading platforms, and a wave of entrepreneurs building exchanges, media outlets, and blockchain infrastructure despite years of regulatory uncertainty. Several founders have emerged as key figures shaping how Indians access information about digital assets and participate in the evolving crypto market.

Here are some of the crypto news and platform founders who have played notable roles in shaping India’s digital asset ecosystem.

Naimish Sanghvi: Founder, Coin Crunch India

Naimish Sanghvi left a corporate role at Deloitte to build something the Indian crypto community desperately needed: reliable, unbiased news.

He launched Coin Crunch India in 2018. The platform quickly became a go-to destination for blockchain news, regulatory updates, and in-depth analysis. At a time when mainstream media either ignored or sensationalized crypto, Coin Crunch filled the gap with verified reporting and clear-headed commentary.

Sanghvi’s focus on consumer protection and transparent journalism has earned him trust among both first-time investors and industry veterans. His work continues to shape how Indians understand and engage with digital assets.

Why he matters: He built India’s most credible crypto news brand at a time when the space had almost none.

Nischal Shetty: Founder, WazirX and Co-Founder, Shardeum

Few names carry as much weight in Indian crypto as Nischal Shetty.

He founded WazirX in 2018 alongside Samir Mhatre and Siddharth Menon. The exchange grew into one of India’s most active crypto trading platforms, boasting over 15 million users. After the RBI issued a banking ban on crypto transactions, Shetty launched the #IndiaWantsCrypto campaign. That campaign sustained public pressure until the Supreme Court declared the ban unconstitutional in 2020.

Shetty is also a Forbes 30 Under 30 alumnus. He later co-founded Shardeum, a Layer 1 blockchain designed for high throughput using dynamic sharding. In 2024, he co-launched Pi42, a crypto-INR futures exchange built to help traders avoid the burden of India’s 1% TDS on crypto transactions.

Why he matters: He fought for the legal right to trade crypto in India. Then he kept building infrastructure for the next decade.

Sumit Gupta: Co-Founder and CEO, CoinDCX

Sumit Gupta co-founded CoinDCX with a clear mission: make crypto accessible and trustworthy for every Indian.

CoinDCX now serves over 16 million registered users and is one of India’s most trusted crypto exchange platforms. Gupta has consistently championed responsible innovation. He advocates for transparent regulation and puts investor education at the center of his platform’s identity.

His commentary on India’s regulatory landscape is widely followed. He approaches market development with a focus on building long-term trust rather than chasing short-term volume.

Why he matters: He helped turn crypto investing into a credible financial activity for millions of mainstream Indian users.

Ashish Sukhadeve: Founder and CEO, Analytics Insight

Ashish Sukhadeve built one of India’s most widely read crypto and emerging tech media platforms through Analytics Insight. While others were busy setting up shops to buy and sell coins, he took a different path. He saw that people didn’t just need a place to trade; they needed to understand what they were actually buying.

He built an influence engine. Analytics Insight today covers crypto, blockchain, AI, fintech, and emerging technologies with a strong global readership. Under his leadership, the platform positioned itself at the intersection of digital assets and future tech, giving crypto coverage a broader economic and innovation context.

What sets Sukhadeve apart is scale and vision. Most platforms focus only on price movements or exchange updates. However, he expanded coverage to include Web3 startups, token ecosystems, enterprise blockchain adoption, regulation shifts, and global market trends. That wider lens helped global readers understand how crypto fits into the larger technology revolution.

Why he matters: He transformed crypto reporting from niche coverage into a mainstream tech intelligence platform. Analytics Insight today is one of the most influential crypto and emerging tech media brands catering to audiences worldwide. 

Ashish Singhal: Founder and CEO, CoinSwitch

Ashish Singhal built CoinSwitch around a simple idea: make crypto easy enough for anyone to use.

The platform’s clean interface and beginner-friendly design helped onboard millions of first-time investors. CoinSwitch became India’s second crypto unicorn in 2021, valued at $1.9 billion after a successful Series C round. A Q2 2025 report from CoinSwitch showed that people under 35 now make up roughly 72% of India’s crypto investors, a demographic Singhal helped bring into the space.

He has spent years proving that simplicity is a competitive advantage in a market known for complexity.

Why he matters: He made crypto less intimidating for a generation of new investors in India.

Jaynti Kanani: Co-Founder, Polygon

Jaynti Kanani came from a background in data science and product engineering. That practical foundation shaped everything he built.

He co-founded Polygon, formerly known as Matic Network, to solve one of Ethereum’s most persistent problems: slow speeds and high transaction fees during peak demand. Polygon offered faster and cheaper transactions at scale. Global brands, Web3 developers, and enterprise applications adopted it in large numbers.

Polygon stands as one of India’s most significant contributions to global blockchain infrastructure. The MATIC token surged in value as adoption grew. Kanani’s approach combined deep technical knowledge with a clear understanding of what developers and users actually needed.

Why he matters: He put India on the global blockchain infrastructure map with a product that millions of developers use daily.

Sandeep Nailwal: Co-Founder, Polygon

Sandeep Nailwal co-founded Polygon alongside Kanani and has been one of its most visible public voices.

He has championed blockchain education and community growth with equal energy. Beyond his technical contributions, Nailwal became known internationally for his humanitarian work during the COVID-19 crisis in India. He raised tens of millions of dollars in crypto donations for pandemic relief through the Crypto Relief Fund.

His combination of entrepreneurial execution and public service made him one of the most respected figures in Web3 globally.

Why he matters: He showed that crypto founders could drive both technological impact and meaningful social impact at the same time.

Kashif Raza: Co-Founder, Bitinning

Kashif Raza identified a problem that most crypto founders overlooked: education.

He co-founded Bitinning to teach beginners the fundamentals of crypto without overwhelming them. Through YouTube, community programs, and practical workshops, he breaks down wallet safety, market structure, risk management, and basic blockchain concepts into digestible lessons.

His approach focuses on empowering everyday people to participate in crypto with confidence rather than fear. That mission has made him one of the most trusted educators in India’s crypto community.

Why he matters: He serves the largest and most vulnerable segment of Indian crypto users: the beginners who have no one else to guide them.

Balaji S. Srinivasan: Former CTO, Coinbase (Indian-American)

Balaji Srinivasan is an Indian-American entrepreneur whose influence on global crypto thinking is enormous.

He co-founded 21.co, a Bitcoin startup that evolved into Earn.com. Coinbase acquired Earn.com and appointed Srinivasan as CTO. Before crypto, he co-founded Counsyl, a genomics startup whose DNA screening technology now reaches 3% of all births in the United States.

Srinivasan’s intellectual output on decentralization, network states, and the future of governance has influenced founders and investors worldwide. His prolific writing and podcasting make him one of the most original thinkers to emerge from the Indian tech diaspora.

Why he matters: His ideas about decentralized systems have shaped how a generation of builders thinks about the future of crypto and society.

Naval Ravikant: Co-Founder, AngelList and MetaStable Capital (Indian-American)

Naval Ravikant was born in New Delhi and built a career that bridges Silicon Valley and the blockchain world.

He co-founded AngelList, a platform that transformed how startups connect with angel investors. He made early investments in Uber, Twitter, and Postmates. In 2014, he co-founded MetaStable Capital, a hedge fund focused on Bitcoin, Ethereum, and other digital assets.

Ravikant’s thinking on wealth, technology, and individual sovereignty has been widely shared through his podcast and writing. He sees blockchain as a tool for financial independence and a challenge to centralized financial systems.

Why he matters: His early belief in Bitcoin and blockchain helped legitimize the space for mainstream investors and tech founders globally.

The Bigger Picture

India now leads the Chainalysis Global Crypto Adoption Index across all subindices, including retail, centralized services, DeFi, and institutional activity. That position reflects the work of founders who built real products, fought for clearer regulation, and educated millions of users over many years.

The next chapter of India’s crypto story will be written by this generation of builders and those they inspire. The founders on this list are not just news sources or exchange operators. They are architects of a financial ecosystem that is still being constructed.

Watching what they build next is the best reason to follow crypto news from India.

The company’s Crypto Partner Program, announced Wednesday (March 11), brings together 85 different digital asset and payments companies, including high-profile players like Binance, Circle, Gemini, PayPal and Ripple.

According to the announcement, the program is designed to address digital assets’ transition from something that “ran in parallel to existing financial systems” to something being used for cross-border remittances and B2B money transfers.

“Recognizing how much there is to learn from the innovators building on chain every day, the program will allow expertise and insights to flow both ways as we shape the future together,” Mastercard said in its announcement.

“The Mastercard Crypto Partner Program reflects a core belief that the next phase of on-chain payments will be built through collaboration.”

With this program, participants will work with Mastercard on the design and direction of products and services, such as ways to join the speed and programmability offered by digital assets together with established card rails and commerce flows, per the announcement.

The goal here is to meld innovation, consistent standards and responsible growth via a shared framework for collaboration, Mastercard said.

“The focus is practical execution: translating technical innovation into scalable, compliant use cases that can operate across markets and integrate seamlessly into everyday commerce,” the company added.

In related news, PYMNTS spoke recently with Mastercard Executive Vice President of Blockchain and Digital Assets Raj Dhamodharan about the question of whether stablecoins and crypto posed a threat to his company.

Mastercard and the card networks, that report noted, have spent decades building an answer to the “last mile” problem in payments, with solutions like global acceptance, identity verification, fraud prevention, dispute resolution and compliance frameworks covering 210 countries.

Dhamodharan’s argument to PYMNTS CEO Karen Webster during an episode of the “From the Block” podcast is that stablecoins arrive without any of that institutional infrastructure. That means the last mile isn’t a problem for Mastercard, but rather an opening.

“The merchant may continue to want to receive value in fiat because their everyday expenses are in fiat,” he said.

In other words, PYMNTS wrote, someone still needs to handle the translation between the real and on-chain worlds, and “Mastercard has been in the translation business for half a century.”

On Monday, Bitcoin minted its 20 millionth coin, meaning that more than 95% of all coins have now been mined, leaving the total untapped supply at fewer than one million. The last coin is expected to be discovered in approximately 114 years.