Hackers allegedly stole over $230 million in customer holdings, or about half of the platform’s reserves, from WazirX, one of the country’s main cryptocurrency enterprises. This was one of the worst hacks on an Indian exchange. This event demonstrates the difficulty in securing Bitcoin exchanges and their subsequent heightened vulnerability to hacking attempts on a global scale.
A “force majeure event” that was “beyond its control” was what WazirX referred to as the security breach. A number of deposits have been stopped and the affected wallets have been contacted to facilitate recovery. The business said in a statement that it is in communication with top-tier resources that can assist with the undertaking.
“Our preliminary investigations show that one of the self-custody multi-sig smart contract wallets created outside of the Liminal ecosystem has been compromised. We can confirm that Liminal’s platform is not breached and Liminal’s infrastructure, wallets and assets continue to remain safe,” the company stated in its official statement.
Comprehensive Action Taken by the Company
Police are currently reviewing a physical complaint and the online report submitted through the National Cyber Crime Reporting Portal. Along with CERT-In and the Financial Intelligence Unit (FIU) India, the company has reported the incident.
The listed addresses were blocked after proactive outreach to 500+ exchanges. In order to aid in its recovery efforts, the company is actively collaborating with the many exchanges that are cooperating with it.
Recruiting a team of cybersecurity professionals to aid in the company’s probe and restoration operations.
Set up a bounty program to get back the stolen property. If anyone has information that can help freeze and retrieve the stolen cash, then that person could win up to $10,000. A White Hat Bounty of up to $23 million, or 10%, is what the company is proposing.
It has temporarily disabled the ability to deposit or withdraw INR or cryptocurrency to guarantee the security of your valuables.
The company has chosen to halt all trading operations, despite its earlier warning about partial collateralization of assets. The company will thoroughly inspect the security measures in place, review the impacted systems and forensic data, and then resume normal operations.
Next Step to Keep Its Customers Updated With Recent Developments
The complete impact and recovery methods will be understood and determined by the company’s analysis of all forensic evidence in collaboration with experts.
WazirX is making great strides to facilitate the withdrawal of funds. It values its clients’ understanding while it navigates this intricate issue, as processes such as security audits and forensic analysis take time.
As the project develops, the company will keep its clients aware of its status through frequent updates.
Company Profile is an initiative by StartupTalky to publish verified information on different startups and organizations. The content in this post has been approved by ZebPay.
While scrolling through your news feed, you will find at least one piece of info related to cryptocurrency or bitcoin. Indeed cryptocurrency is taking over the world by storm. This digital currency has changed the dynamics of how people transfer their money or make transactions.
India is also seeing a rising trend in the cryptocurrency market. A couple of years ago, the ban on cryptocurrency was lifted by the Supreme Court of India. These days, there is another fad that is going around the corner, and that is Cryptocurrency Wallets. It is a digital solution that allows users to securely store and manage blockchain assets and cryptocurrencies. These wallets also allow users to spend, receive, in short, make transactions through mobile phones or computers.
ZebPay is currently one of the fastest-growing cryptocurrency exchanges in India. The company was founded in 2014 by three co-founders, Mahin Gupta, Sandeep Goenka, and Saurabh Agrawal.
In this article, we will explore ZebPay’s business and revenue model, startup story, founders, and more.
Founded in 2014, ZebPay is a cryptocurrency exchange platform with a simple interface and advanced crypto trading features. It offers a simple and easy-to-use app and wallet facility that allows users to set trading alerts, trade pairs, and buy a variety of cryptocurrencies. The ZebPay app is available on both Android and iOS. This crypto wallet service provider has its headquarters in Singapore with a registered office in Australia and offers its services in over 160 countries.
There are over 5.5 million registered traders on ZebPay. It is considered one of the safest crypto platforms because safety is the company’s top priority. The company’s security measures have kept its customers’ funds protected as more than 98% of coins are reserved in cold wallets, and robust internal controls make transactions stress-free and highly secured.
In 2020, after Supreme Court lifted the ban on the crypto market in India, ZebPay launched a new feature known as INR trading and introduced instant deposit and withdrawal features. The company claims to be India’s number one choice for Bitcoin-INR trading. In India, its offices are in Mumbai and Ahmedabad.
ZebPay – Industry
The need for cryptocurrency is anticipated to grow rapidly in the coming years as a result of improved data transparency and independence in payments in banks, financial services, insurance, and other business sectors.
As per reports, the global cryptocurrency market is set to grow at a CAGR of 12.2% from 2022 to 2030. It is expected that the cryptocurrency market is going to reach $11.71 billion by 2030.
ZebPay was founded bySandeep Goenka, Mahin Gupta, and Saurabh Agrawal. The founders are no longer involved in the daily operations of ZebPay after Rahul Pagidipati took over the leadership of the company in 2020 and became the CEO of ZebPay. In 2021, ZebPay announced that Rahul Pagidipati and Avinash Shekhar would share responsibilities as co-CEOs. Later in 2022, Rahul came back in charge as the CEO, as Avinash embarked on his entrepreneurial journey with the launch of his own venture in the Web3 space.
Mahin Gupta
Mahin Gupta – Co-founder of ZebPay
Mahin Gupta’s crypto journey began in 2012. He founded India’s first bitcoin company, ‘BuySellBitco.in’. Mahin Gupta graduated in Computer Engineering from Hemchandracharya North Gujarat University. He has over ten years of experience in managing wallet infrastructure, where he has organized billions of dollars in transaction volumes and digital assets with bank-grade security and performance. Mahin Gupta founded a bespoke wallet infrastructure, Liminal in 2021 with its headquarters in Singapore.
Saurabh Agrawal
Saurabh Agrawal – Co-founder of ZebPay
Saurabh Agarwal obtained his Master’s degree in Marketing Research from the University of Wales, Cardiff. Before co-founding ZebPay, he was previously the Founder and Chairman of Red Events. His company, Red Events is India’s award-winning event management company, a three-time winner of EEMA and GIWA.
Sandeep Goenka
Sandeep Goenka – Co-founder of ZebPay
Presently, Sandeep Goenka is the CEO of 21Towers. He had also founded Blynk Systems before co-founding ZebPay. Sandeep is a certified Bitcoin professional from Cryptocurrency Certification Consortium. He holds a Master’s degree from SP Jain Institute of Management in Entrepreneurial studies.
Rahul Pagidipati
Rahul Pagidipati – CEO of ZebPay
Rahul Pagidipati is the Chairman and CEO of ZebPay. He acquired a majority stake in the company in 2020. Before ZebPay, he was the co-founder and director at Anion Technologies for 20 years. Rahul holds an MBA from Northwestern University’s School of Law and Kellogg School of Management. He is a licensed attorney in the state of Florida and a partner at the corporate and bankruptcy law firm Rhodes Tucker. Since 2011, he has been investing in Blockchain and Digital Currencies.
ZebPay – Startup Story
ZebPay was started in 2014 by three young minds, Mahin Gupta, Sandeep Goenka, and Saurabh Agarwal. Initially, ZebPay was known as BuySellBitco.in. The then platform allowed its users to exchange and trade in cryptocurrency and became one of India’s largest exchange platforms. The three founders started the firm knowing that crypto was a risky business. Their dream took its unexpected turn when they had to shut down the company in 2018.
The shutting down of the company was mainly due to RBI not supporting the crypto market in India, which led to many Indian banks not showing any usefulness to the company.
The firm bided its time during 2018 and 2020 by working to secure existing customer accounts, adding various multi-signature wallet infrastructures, and exploring business opportunities in Malta, Australia, Singapore, and other places. However, this was also not working well for the founders, as a result, they started to consider other options or the possibility of shutting down ZebPay entirely.
In 2019, Rahul Pagidipati, who was a silent partner of ZebPay, purchased the majority of the company.
By 2020 with the Supreme Court’s decision, a new ray of hope came for ZebPay. The company had its new management system and was revived from the scratch. Today, ZebPay’s trading volumes have grown to a great extent and have helped more than 5 million users begin their crypto investment journey.
ZebPay – Name, Tagline, and Logo
ZebPay Logo
The name, ZebPay was chosen as a combination of the words “zebra” and “pay”. The founders wanted a name that was catchy, easy to remember, and also conveyed a sense of trust and reliability, which are key attributes for a cryptocurrency exchange platform.
ZebPay is seen going with the tagline, ‘CryptoMeinPro’.
ZebPay – Business and Revenue Model
ZebPay’s business model can be said to be B2C, B2B, and B2B2C. It works as a three-pronged business model, which means that ZebPay operates its business through three segments, these are:
Trading fees – When users use their platform to buy or sell bitcoins.
Membership fees – For the registered accounts that have cryptos and are inactive.
Crypto holdings – Gets revenue from its own crypto holdings.
Overall, ZebPay’s revenue model is based on providing a secure and user-friendly platform for cryptocurrency trading and generating revenue through trading fees, membership fees, and its own cryptocurrency holdings.
ZebPay has raised a total of $1.1 million in funding over two rounds. The company is funded by two investors; Arjun Handa and Nagendra Chaudhary.
Date
Funding Round
Amount Raised
Lead Investor
Jan 6, 2016
Series A
$1 million
Arjun Handa
Sept 14, 2014
Seed Round
$125K
–
ZebPay – Investments
As of 2022, ZebPay has made a total of three investments. The details are as follows:
Date
Company Name
Lead Investor
Funding Round
Money Raised
Oct 18, 2022
Shardeum
–
Seed Round
$18.2 million
Apr 14, 2022
Ethereum Push Notification Service
–
Series A
$10.1 million
Mar 28, 2022
Paxo Finance
–
Seed Round
$1 million
ZebPay – Advertisements and Social Media Campaigns
ZebPay – #CryptoMeinPro Campaign
ZebPay appointed Lowe Lintas Bangalore for managing its creative responsibilities. The company launched a multi-film campaign, ‘Crypto Mein Pro’, created by Lowe Lintas. The primary objective of this campaign was to create awareness and establish a unique brand positioning for ZebPay as ‘Crypto Mein Pro.’ It was designed to show that even beginners can become experts in cryptocurrency investing with the help of ZebPay’s easy-to-use platform.
The campaign received a positive response from the audience and helped the brand in increasing its user base and trading volumes.
According to a source, ZebPay aims to create a more referral structure and have incentives, and AMEX-like membership programs for its users in the coming days. Furthermore, the company also plans to become a financial advisor like a crypto investment bank for various crypto startups, and eCommerce, travel, healthcare, and other such sectors.
ZebPay – FAQs
What does ZebPay do?
ZebPay offers a simple and easy-to-use app and wallet facility that allows users to set trading alerts, trade pairs, and buy a variety of cryptocurrencies.
Who is the founder of ZebPay?
ZebPay was founded by Mahin Gupta, Sandeep Goenka, and Saurabh Agrawal in 2014.
Is ZebPay an Indian company?
Yes, ZebPay is a company based in India but with a global perspective. While its headquarters are in Singapore, it was founded in India and has operations in several countries including India, Australia, and Singapore.
Which country uses ZebPay?
ZebPay can be used in Singapore, Australia, India, and other 160 countries.
Alan Joseph
