Crypto Startup Carret Raises Funding, Eyes Expansion To Middle East, SEA

Crypto trading platform Carret has raised an undisclosed amount of pre-seed funding from a clutch of investors, including Polygon cofounder Sandeep Nailwal, former BlackRock executive Yan Wu, and Amesten Capital. 

Carret will use the funding to strengthen its operations and scale up the startup’s product and strategy verticals. The investment will also be deployed to hire global talent and expand its footprint outside India. Additionally, the funding will also be deployed for marketing requirements and to build a secure app. 

Speaking to Inc42, Carret cofounder Neha Kumari said that the startup is currently focused on India as a target market and is looking at expanding to the Middle East and South-East Asian countries in the next 6-8 months.

Founded in 2021 by IIT BHU and IIM Ahmedabad alumni Kumari and Shuja Hussain, Carret is a crypto trading platform that allows users to trade in more than 100 cryptocurrencies. The startup’s flagship product, 24Carret, claims to offer up to 17% in annual percentage yield (APY).

Kumari told Inc42 that the startup deposits its crypto assets across multiple institutional borrowers, protocol level staking, and the DeFi ecosystem to minimise risks. She further added that the team at the startup vets the borrowers to create a yield that maximises returns.

In response to a question, she said that the startup largely combines tech and human elements to create these yields, leveraging in-house experts and external financial consultants to build the product.

On its revenue model, Kumari said Carret deducts a certain margin from the user’s trade volume and also takes a share of the total APY guaranteed to the customer. She further added that the startup plans to launch a lendingtech arm in the future to create a parallel stream of revenue. 

Carret is also planning another fundraise in the next six-eight months, she said. Going forward, the company will invest more in tech and product to improve the user interface and experience on the app.

The Singapore and Bengaluru-based Carret claims to have registered an average 10X growth in the last three months. It largely caters to GenZ, millennials and recently-employed youth who want to invest in crypto and diversify their holdings.

On the current regulations for the crypto space in India, Kumari said there is ‘somewhat bit of clarity’ on certain grey areas, but there is still scope for improvement. 

The Crypto Pain-Point

The funding announcement comes amid a purported crypto winter, high scrutiny and taxation of the industry by the government.

Crypto funding, which gained momentum in the first few months of the 2022, fell with a thud as the global cryptocurrency market cap sunk below the $1 Tn mark in the last eight months amid a global economic slowdown.

Meanwhile, the government has implicitly made its stance clear on cryptocurrency. Last month, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman told the Parliament that the Reserve bank of India (RBI) had recommended banning crypto. Additionally, the government has also imposed a 30% tax on all income from transfer of virtual digital assets (VDAs) and a 1% tax deduction on source (TDS) for cryptocurrency transactions.