Vauld is a crypto lending and trading company based in Singapore, founded by Indian entrepreneurs, that offered crypto trading and lending products for retail customers.

This Startup Deep Dive explains what Vauld does, how it makes money, who backs it, how it compares with rivals and what could go wrong, using publicly available information. It is educational and not investment advice. Last updated: October 2026.

Vauld in Brief

• What it is: Vauld is an Indian Crypto lending and trading company based in Singapore.
• Who it serves: consumers, merchants, banks, lenders and enterprises.
• Vauld operated a crypto trading and lending platform, with interest accounts, crypto-backed loans, a crypto-backed credit card and trading and lending APIs.
• It advertised yields of 12.68% on stablecoins and 6.7% on bitcoin and ether, and loans up to a 66.67% loan-to-value ratio (reported).
• It reportedly had more than 800,000 users, about 75% in India.
• Funding: About $27M (reported).

Vauld Quick Facts

Figures marked “reported” come from published reports and may differ between sources; “Not disclosed” means no reliable public figure was found.

What Is Vauld?

Vauld operates in the Crypto lending and trading space in India. Understanding a company like this starts with three questions: who is the customer, what painful problem is being solved, and why the solution is better than the alternatives. The sections below apply that lens to Vauld.

• Vauld operated a crypto trading and lending platform, with interest accounts, crypto-backed loans, a crypto-backed credit card and trading and lending APIs.
• It advertised yields of 12.68% on stablecoins and 6.7% on bitcoin and ether, and loans up to a 66.67% loan-to-value ratio (reported).
• It reportedly had more than 800,000 users, about 75% in India.
• Its stated use of funds from its Series A was to expand beyond India and add payments, credit and trading products.

The Origin Story of Vauld

Every company starts from a noticed gap and a team willing to commit to closing it. Strong origin stories are specific: a clear problem, a founding team with relevant skills, and an early product that real customers could test. Founder-market fit, meaning the team’s lived experience or technical depth in the domain, tends to predict how fast a young company learns.

• Founders: Darshan Bathija, Sanju Sony Kurian.
• Vauld was founded in 2018 by two Indian entrepreneurs, Darshan Bathija (CEO) and Sanju Sony Kurian (CTO), who had previously built startups past Series A (reported).
• It was headquartered in Singapore, registered as DeFi Payments Pte Ltd, but operated and managed from India.
• Both founders were named in the Forbes Asia 30 Under 30 list in 2022.

Key Milestones and Challenges

No startup grows in a straight line. Early years usually involve slow adoption, product rewrites, hiring mistakes and funding gaps. In the Crypto lending and trading sector the common turning points are a first paying customer, a regulatory approval, a successful product demonstration or a funding round that lets the team invest ahead of demand. How a team responds to setbacks says more about resilience than any single headline.

• Mid-2020: Raised $500K from LuneX Ventures and Indian angel investors (reported).
• Late 2020: Raised about $2M with participation from Coinbase Ventures, Pantera Capital and Compound founder Robert Leshner (reported).
• July 2021: $25M Series A led by Valar Ventures.
• June 2022: users withdrew about $197M after the TerraUSD collapse; about 30% of staff were cut.
• July 2022: suspended withdrawals, trading and deposits; applied to a Singapore court for a moratorium.
• August 2022: Singapore High Court granted a three-month moratorium; Nexo talks later fell through (reported).

Vauld Funding and Investors

Funding history shows how much outside confidence a company has attracted and how long it can operate before needing more capital. Figures below are reported and may differ between sources; valuation figures are estimates unless the company has confirmed them.

• Mid-2020: $500K from LuneX Ventures and angel investors (reported).
• Late 2020: about $2M from investors including Coinbase Ventures and Pantera Capital (reported).
• July 2021: $25M Series A led by Peter Thiel's Valar Ventures, with Pantera Capital, Coinbase Ventures, CMT Digital, Gumi Cryptos and Robert Leshner; Valar partner Andrew McCormack joined the board (reported).

How Does Vauld Make Money? (Business Model)

A business model describes who pays, how often and how much it costs to serve them. Strong models show repeat usage, improving margins with scale and acquisition channels that do not depend only on paid spend. Weak models show one-off sales, rising costs and growth that stops when spending stops. For companies selling to consumers, merchants, banks, lenders and enterprises, sales cycles and contract size matter as much as headline growth.

• Crypto trading and lending, including collateralised loans; earned on lending spreads and trading (reported).
• Former employees said it failed to diversify revenue beyond lending.

The Numbers: Vauld Financials

Financial figures show whether growth is turning into a self-sustaining business. Small and private companies often disclose little, so any number below is included only if it was found in public reporting.

• Assets about $330M versus liabilities about $400M after the TerraUSD meltdown, a deficit of about $70M (reported); the company owed $402M to creditors, $363M of it to retail depositors (reported).
• About $197M to $198M was withdrawn from 12 June 2022.
• Indian authorities were reported to have frozen assets worth $46.4M.

Market Opportunity for Vauld

Market size is easy to exaggerate, so a useful approach separates the total market from the portion a company can realistically reach with its current product and distribution. The main forces behind demand in this sector are the scale of UPI, rising digital lending, growing participation in investing and insurance, and the digitisation of small merchants. Each of these widens the opportunity, but capital efficiency and execution decide who captures it.

• Retail crypto users, initially India-focused with global expansion plans.

Technology and Product at Vauld

Technology is rarely the whole moat, but it drives speed, cost and customer experience. A practical way to assess it is to separate the capability the company controls from the commodity infrastructure it rents. In this sector the important factors are uptime, security, fraud controls, integrations with banks and the speed of onboarding customers.

• Core capability: Public detail on Vauld’s technology stack is limited beyond company-stated descriptions.
• Assessment lens: uptime, security, fraud controls, integrations with banks and the speed of onboarding customers.

Team and Culture at Vauld

Teams are the most important and least measurable asset of a young company. Look at how complementary the founders’ skills are, how deep the second layer of leadership is, and how the company hires and retains specialists. Culture shows up in small repeated behaviours: how quickly bad news travels upward and whether commitments to customers are kept.

• Darshan Bathija was CEO and Sanju Sony Kurian CTO; Kroll and law firms Cyril Amarchand Mangaldas and Rajah & Tann were engaged in the restructuring.

Vauld Competitors: Competitive Landscape

A fair competitive analysis names direct rivals, adjacent players who could move into the space, and the customer’s default alternative. Durable advantages include proprietary data or technology, licences and approvals, brand trust, switching costs and cost leadership.

Risks and Challenges for Vauld

• Withdrawals were suspended in July 2022 and the company sought court protection from creditors.
• The Nexo acquisition did not come to fruition.
• Business concentrated in crypto lending with a mismatch between customer deposits and loans.
• Some creditors turned hostile and sent demand letters (reported).
• Regulatory risk: rules from the RBI, SEBI, IRDAI or NPCI can change economics or business scope quickly.
• Concentration risk: dependence on a few partners, banks or payment rails can create single points of failure.

Risk is not a reason to avoid a company; it is a reason to price it correctly and to monitor the right indicators over time. Regulation in this sector is shaped by the RBI, SEBI, IRDAI and NPCI.

Vauld Growth Outlook: What to Watch

• The moratorium was extended in 2022 while Vauld explored options; the final outcome for creditors was not found in sources read.
• Key indicators: transaction value, take rate, active users, credit quality and cost of acquiring each customer.
• Funding position: Whether Vauld can reach its next milestone before needing new capital.
• Regulation: Changes from the RBI, SEBI, IRDAI and NPCI.

Industry Context: Where Vauld Fits

India's financial technology sector has been shaped by public digital infrastructure, especially UPI, along with Aadhaar-based identity, the account aggregator framework and regulation from the RBI, SEBI and IRDAI. These rails let startups reach customers and merchants at very low cost, but also expose them to fast-changing rules on licensing, data and lending conduct.

As payments become a low-margin commodity, fintech companies increasingly compete on distribution, merchant services, credit, wealth and insurance products. Sustainable profit usually depends on compliance strength, cost control and the quality of customer relationships rather than transaction volume alone.

For readers new to this field, a useful habit is to separate announcements from evidence. A plan, a partnership or a funding headline describes intent, while a delivered product, a paying customer or an audited financial statement describes results. Comparing the two over time shows how reliably a company turns promises into outcomes.

Bull Case and Bear Case for Vauld

An investment thesis is a short, testable statement of why a company could become far more valuable, together with what evidence would prove it wrong. The points below are general to this sector and are not forecasts for Vauld.

Bull case

• Digital payments and credit continue to grow, widening the market.
• Strong compliance and distribution create durable advantages.
• Cross-selling to existing customers can lift revenue per user.

Bear case

• Regulatory shifts can change economics overnight.
• Free or low-fee products make profit hard to reach.
• Fraud, outages and partner dependence can hurt trust.

Lessons Founders and Investors Can Take from Vauld

Studying a company in the Crypto lending and trading space offers lessons that go beyond any single firm. The points below are general lessons for the sector and are not claims about Vauld.

• Compliance is a growth enabler in financial services, not just a cost, because licences decide what a company is allowed to sell.
• Distribution and customer trust often matter more than the underlying payment or lending technology.
• Products that earn from services and credit tend to be steadier than ones that depend on free transactions.
• Dependence on a single bank partner or rail creates risk that should be managed early.
• Fraud prevention and uptime are core product features, not back-office tasks.

How to Evaluate Vauld as a Startup

• Customer clarity: Can Vauld name its customer and the problem it solves in one sentence?
• Evidence of demand: Look for repeat customers, signed contracts or measurable usage rather than announcements alone.
• Economics: Check whether margins improve as volume grows.
• Execution: Compare announced timelines with what has actually been delivered.
• Funding runway: Estimate how long current capital lasts at the present spending rate.
• Regulatory standing: Confirm required approvals are in place.
• Customer concentration: Check whether a few customers account for most of the revenue.
• Management depth: Look for experienced leaders beyond the founders and a stable core team.

The Takeaway

Vauld is part of India’s growing Crypto lending and trading ecosystem. The useful lesson from studying it is the discipline of asking structured questions about customers, economics, advantage and resilience. Companies that answer them well, repeatedly and under pressure are the ones that endure. Readers should treat any single report, ranking or funding headline as one input among many, and should re-check key facts against recent company announcements. Because public information on young companies is often limited, patience in verifying claims is part of good analysis. Public sources can also describe the same company in different ways, so it is worth checking dates, definitions and whether a figure refers to revenue, total income or transaction value, and whether it covers one entity or a wider group, before drawing conclusions. Small differences in rounding, currency conversion or reporting periods can also change how a figure reads. Comparing the same figure across several recent reports helps show whether it is stable or has changed over time. This article is educational and is not investment advice.

• Clear customers and repeat demand matter more than announcements.
• Regulation and capital needs shape how fast a startup in this sector can grow.
• Track a few leading indicators over time rather than one headline metric.

Vauld FAQs: Frequently Asked Questions

What is Vauld?

Vauld is a crypto lending and trading company based in Singapore, founded by Indian entrepreneurs, that offered crypto trading and lending products for retail customers. It is profiled in the Startup Deep Dive series, which explains business model, funding, competitors and risks.

Who founded Vauld?

Vauld was founded by Darshan Bathija, Sanju Sony Kurian, and the company reports a founding year of 2018.

How much funding has Vauld raised?

About $27M (reported). Funding figures are reported and may differ between sources, so readers should check the latest company announcements.

How does Vauld make money?

Vauld earns revenue from its Crypto lending and trading products and services sold to consumers, merchants, banks, lenders and enterprises. The exact revenue mix is described in the business model section and is not fully disclosed publicly.

Who are the competitors of Vauld?

Reported rivals include Celsius, BlockFi, CoinDCX, WazirX. See the competitor comparison above for how they differ.

What are the main risks for Vauld?

Main risks include rules from the rbi, sebi, irdai or npci can change economics or business scope quickly, funding and capital needs, competition and regulation by the RBI, SEBI, IRDAI and NPCI. This is educational content, not investment advice.

Related Startup Deep Dives: Tickertape — Tickertape: spun out of smallcase with a $5M investment | Mylo — Mylo: mom-care brand that raised $17 Mn Series B. Browse the full Startup Deep Dive series.

Source

Source: Publicly available data, published reports, industry research, and other credible sources.