WazirX

0 standards supported

Key details

Launch: 2018

Overview

WazirX is one of India's best-known cryptocurrency exchanges, historically tied to Binance and a pioneer of peer-to-peer INR funding for Indian crypto users [1, 2, in-cro]. It became a household crypto brand in India before suffering a major 2024 security breach that forced a restructuring.

History

2018 — WazirX founded in Mumbai by Nischal Shetty, Sameer Mhatre and Siddharth Menon, pioneering a P2P engine to work around banking restrictions. 2019 — acquired by Binance (the scope of the acquisition later became disputed between Binance and the founders). 2021–2023 — grows rapidly during India's crypto boom despite a 1% TDS tax and regulatory uncertainty; registers with FIU-IND under India's anti-money-laundering rules. July 2024 — suffers a ~$230M hack of its multisig wallet, one of the largest exchange breaches of the year, freezing withdrawals. 2024–2025 — pursues a Singapore court-supervised restructuring (via parent Zettai) and a creditor recovery/restart plan.

Ownership & operator

Operating entity: Zanmai Labs Pvt Ltd (India) with parent Zettai Pte Ltd (Singapore). Major shareholders: founders (Shetty, Mhatre, Menon), with Binance holding a disputed/limited interest. Regulators: India's Financial Intelligence Unit (FIU-IND) registration under the PMLA; no dedicated Indian crypto regulator.

Technical integration

Mobile and web apps with a trading API. Supports BTC, ETH and a broad token roster via crypto deposit addresses, with INR funding historically via P2P and bank rails, subject to India's 1% TDS and 30% crypto tax regime.

Implementations & partners

Major competitors: [[binance]] (global exchange, former parent) + [[coindcx]] (Indian exchange) + [[coinbase]] (global exchange).

Status

Active but rebuilding after the 2024 hack and a Singapore-supervised restructuring [1, 2].

Sources

1 WazirX — official
2 WazirX — Wikipedia
in-cro In-corpus: reports/countries/IN-india.md

Source

Biography extracted from wazirx.md. See matrix.md for standards-support matrix if present.