Nishcal Shetty, founder of cryptocurrency exchange WazirX, proclaims on his personal website – Volatility is part of life.

This couldn’t be more ominous or rather brutally real going by his tumultuous entrepreneurial journey as the Mumbai-headquartered company battles yet another storm after it was hit by a security breach earlier in July that wiped off nearly half of its reserves to the tune of about $230 million.

[A tid-bit: In 2017, Indian crypto exchange Coinsecure suffered a security breach resulting in the loss of $3.5 million. The company accused its chief security officer, Amitabh Saxena, of stealing the Bitcoins from its wallet and filed an FIR against him. A few months later, Coinsecure announced the closure of its operations.]

WazirX, operated by Zanmai Labs Pvt Ltd, called the breach “a force majeure event.” But what’s worse is WazirX’s plan to “socialise” the losses by making its customers share the brunt of it, drawing much flak from its users as well as the industry. [The company claims to have 16 million users on its platform.]

This is undoubtedly the biggest challenge faced by WazirX in its close to seven-year old journey. It has earlier confronted bigger roadblocks including strict regulatory hurdles surrounding the crypto space, government tax raids and its controversy over its acquisition by global crypto exchange Binance. WazirX has been able to brave it all and survive while not emerging totally unscathed. Shetty’s philosophy that “successful companies are built by people who refuse to give up in the face of failure and push themselves further” may have kept the company standing through its many challenges. The question now is will WazirX withstand this current storm as it continues to battle several other issues. Time will tell and we reserve our predictions. 

So for now instead of crystal gazing into the future, The Head and Tale looks back at the volatile journey of WazirX and its founder Shetty to get a sense of how far the company has come and where it currently stands.