Equitable access to finance has always been our guiding force. And we believe crypto technology has the power to effect this change — breaking down the barriers of gender, geography, and class.
It’s what our mission of Making Money Equal for All is really about. To make crypto accessible for everyone – not just the experts and specialists.
But it would be remiss to say we have got it all covered. Today, a mere 15% of our registered users are women. There is clearly, plenty of room to grow. But we’re taking small steps in this direction. Starting with a diverse and inclusive workforce to build a product that serves the kaleidoscope that India is.
As a leader in the crypto industry in India, we also bear a great responsibility in nurturing leaders of tomorrow. Because the stakes are high: Web3.0 is the future of the internet. But if it isn’t equitable, it won’t be sustainable.
This isn’t just a reflection of good ethos, but also good business. Research has shown that companies with the greatest gender diversity generated about 34% of their revenues from innovative products and services.
At CoinSwitch, we want the incredible women building the future of finance, to evolve into leaders of tomorrow. Each of them could be at different timelines, but very much on this journey.
So, this Women’s Day, we’re highlighting the journey of five such BUIDLers — the first women in their teams — and what we’ve learned from them.
Trust begins with Empowerment
Swati Brahma is the multitasker who makes everyone else look like amateurs. She joined CoinSwitch in April 2018 when the company was just four employees old. Incidentally, she’s also CoinSwitch’s first female employee. Back then, Swati says, she moonlighted as the content writer to support staff to the marketer.
“I didn’t have much idea about crypto then,” she said. “And I had some apprehensions as I was moving from a steady job to a young and crazy startup, but our founders’ confidence is infectious”.
CoinSwitch has seen much growth since then — we’re now 500-plus employees strong. And Swati has grown too: now a Customer Experience Analyst within the Operations team, she believes amongst all that’s changed, one thing has remained ths same. “At CoinSwitch, there is no micromanagement. The employees are trusted with day to day operations and even with critical decisions” she said.
Ownership trumps Hierarchy
Dinshaw Kothari was building on blockchain before the blokes discovered it. Previously a blockchain developer at one of India’s largest IT services companies, she was the first woman to join CoinSwitch’s engineering team in December 2020.
“Just the scale of things excites me about CoinSwitch. When I joined, we were celebrating 1 million users. And today, within just a couple of months, we’ve reached 15 million,” Dinshaw said.
She also speaks of a greater sense of ownership. “In traditional companies, work is distributed and delegated across several departments. There is a rigid hierarchy. So as a developer, I would have never known the perspective of the client.”
With CoinSwitch, she gets to use the product being built as it happens. “There is a clarity of vision. We know why we are doing and what we are doing… and this leads to personal growth”
Progress made possible by Flexibility
Monica Reddy makes the data do the modeling. A computer science graduate, she got her foot in the door through an internship before joining CoinSwitch full-time as a Data Analyst in 2019.
“My idea of work culture was very different from what I found here. People were friendly and fun to work with,” she recalls. “I was younger than other colleagues, but my opinions were heard and the feedback has always been constructive.”
The support she received allayed her concerns as a fresher. “I wasn’t sure if I should be a developer after my graduation … I wasn’t a very good coder. But I was able to shift to data analysis and learn the ropes on the job.”
Cutting through the Clutter
Guntaas Kaur Lotay is the go-to people’s person at CoinSwitch. She joined the company as a Human Resource Associate in December 2020.
“I joined CoinSwitch just out of college, but got the opportunity to directly work with CXO’s. This helped me grow personally and professionally… I could even ask the simplest of the questions like what HODL stands for.”
Being part of the fintech space also helped her be financially independent, she says. “It is a new industry that is easy to enter. Only a little bit of curiosity and spark to dig a bit deeper is all it needs to enter crypto.”
The one thing that’s becoming even clearer to us it’s that inclusivity starts at home. We are committed to enable more women to spearhead the future of decentralisation and not just cheer it on from the sidelines. It harkens back to the very essence of Web3, an ecosystem that does not discriminate on any basis, not race, not financial status, and never on the basis of gender.
