‘Crypto today is where mutual funds were in 1995’: BitDelta India CEO on digital assets and their role in

Few people in India have sold three different asset classes to sceptical, first-time investors. Vikaas M. Sachdeva is one of them. Now Chief Executive Officer of BitDelta India, a crypto exchange, he describes himself as among the first in the country to make the leap from mutual funds and portfolio management into crypto. Sachdeva began in merchant banking in the mid-1990s, handling a flood of Initial Public Offers (IPOs). He went on to hold senior business development roles at global asset managers and later led a domestic asset management company. He later ran a Portfolio Management Service (PMS) firm and another investment business before heading a large Alternative Investment Fund (AIF). Each shift, he says, opened a new investor universe, from Rs.500 Systematic Investment Plans (SIPs) to Rs.5 crore ticket sizes. Crypto was an asset class he first refused. But later he concluded that it simply needed evangelising, much as mutual funds did in 1995. In an interview with ET Wealth, Sachdeva also discusses if India’s regulatory framework is moving in a positive or negative direction.

The IT sector in the early 2000s.