Indian Bitcoin exchange and wallet provider Zebpay has experienced an exponential growth in its user base over the past 12 months. Recently, the company reached a major milestone of 500,000 mobile Android users, a mobile user base that is larger than all the mobile applications of Bitcoin exchanges and service providers in South Korea combined.

Such metric is important to assess the actual growth rate of the Indian Bitcoin exchange market and industry as South Korea is the fourth largest Bitcoin exchange market with a market share of nearly 10 percent and a $63 mln daily trading volume. In contrast, the Indian Bitcoin exchange market accounts for around one percent of the global Bitcoin exchange market with a relatively small daily trading volume.

India’s growth rate

Most Bitcoin market data providers including BraveNewCoin don’t include the three leading and largest Bitcoin exchanges in India which are Unocoin, Coinsecure and Zebpay.

"If the daily trading volumes of the three exchanges are also considered, it is highly likely that the Indian Bitcoin exchange market would rank significantly higher than other exchange markets that currently portray larger trading volumes than India."

As seen in the note provided above, South Korea has some of the most prominent exchanges backed by major investors including the $17 bln South Korean telecommunications company SK Telecom. South Korea’s three largest exchanges Bithumb, Korbit and Coinone are all backed by influential investors and conglomerates in the country. Yet, one of the three leading Indian exchanges on the Indian Bitcoin exchange market, which isn’t even currently ranked in the top 10 largest exchange markets, has a larger mobile user base than that of the South Korean Bitcoin exchange market.

It is an interesting and important market data to acknowledge considering that India is struggling to deal with a nationwide financial crisis. 90 percent of the country’s ATMs are dysfunctional and a limited group of people has access to banking services that can be used to obtain cash to fund day-to-day operations.

Government approach

Amidst this economic and financial uncertainty in India, the user base of Bitcoin is rapidly increasing throughout the region.

Unocoin, in particular, has also experienced a surge in its user base and trading volume after the Indian government announced that it intends to consider regulating the industry in the near future.