Coinbase Makes it First Acquisition in India: Agara

The acquisition will bring expertise in Machine Learning (ML) and Natural Language Processing (NLP) to the technological arsenal of Coinbase.

Crypto exchange Coinbase has announced the acquisition of Agara, an Artificial Intelligence-powered support platform.

This is the first acquisition made by the exchange in India. It also reiterates Coinbase’s vision to build its tech hub in the country.

Agara has expertise in ML and NLP. This technological stack will greatly enhance the exchange’s engineering team.

Coinbase will be using Agara’s capabilities to enhance its Customer Experience (CX) tools.

It is already intensively focusing on CX. This year it increased its support staff manpower by 5 times and plans to deliver 24/7 phone support and live messaging by end of the year.

The acquisition will help it provide a personalized experience to its customers.

Agara is the brainchild of Abhimanyu, Arjun Maheswaran, and Pankaj Gupta. Surprisingly, Pankaj had left the startup in the very first year and currently serves as the Vice President of Engineering at Coinbase. 

Abhimanyu expressed his elation and said,

“We owe this outcome to several people who have supported us through this journey. Pankaj Gupta, our co-founder and the closest advisor. Sanjay Nath from Blume. Kirill Kozhevnikov from RTP Global. Kiran Mysore from UTEC. We are also extremely grateful to our earliest backers — Mike Abbott, formerly from Kleiner Perkins, and Rosa Maria Cruz from Procter & Gamble.”

Abhimanyu, Co-founder of Agara

The exchange does not offer many of its capabilities to its Indian users, but it is growing its footing in the country through its investments and its office in India. 

As per the company’s LinkedIn page, currently, 95 people work in its Bengaluru office.

Moreover, it has made investments in other Indian startups too such as CoinSwitch Kuber, Stader Labs, CoinDCX, etc. through its venture fund called Coinbase Ventures.

India has a huge pool of proficient Information Technology Engineers who have for long worked on outsourced projects. Now they are vying for their positions at the vanguard of the sector. Their startups have appreciable offerings that are competing for the global market. That’s why global players are opening their technological centres in India and acquiring Indian startups.

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