Crypto tax reporting app, Binocs, raises $4mn seed capital
Highlights:
- Aims to simplify tax and compliance for Indian retail crypto investors
- Expands operations to the US, UK, Australia, and South Africa; to target institutional investors
- Seed round saw participation from global investors including, BEENEXT, Arkam Ventures, Accel, Saison Capital, Premji Invest, Blume Ventures, Better Capital
BENGALURU, India, Sept. 22, 2022 /PRNewswire/ — Binocs, the crypto taxation and Web3 portfolio tracking platform, today announced raising $4 million in its seed round from global institutional investors led by BEENEXT, along with Arkam Ventures, Accel, Saison Capital, Premji Invest, Blume Ventures, and Better Capital. The company is also backed by several stellar crypto-native angel investors from the US and India. Binocs, which is launching its platform in the US, UK, South Africa, and Australia, will utilise the funds to expand its product, engineering, growth, and marketing teams.
Blockchain is a living ecosystem, and cryptocurrency is one of its first use cases. Over 300 million people around the world have crypto assets in their investment portfolio, a number that is set to double by 2025. However, the financial compliance of this new asset class has become a bottleneck for investors and regulatory authorities. Founded in July 2022 by Tonmoy Shingal (Co-founder, Mettl, acquired by Mercer in 2018) and Pankaj Garg (Co-founder, Plabro Networks, ex-Google, American Express), Binocs came into being to help simplify these taxations and compliance for crypto investors. In the fast-evolving and complex crypto world, the company enables crypto investors to simplify their accounting and aggregates various Web3-based investments such as NFTs, DeFi Protocols, and Smart Contracts. Binocs helps investors stay on top of their portfolios across 300+ exchanges, 50+ wallets, NFTs, and Smart Contracts. The platform also serves the fast-growing pool of businesses transacting in crypto to help them with compliance, accounting, and portfolio tracking.
On this occasion, Tonmoy Shingal, Co-Founder, Binocs, said, “At a time when the various regulations around crypto tax are causing apprehension amongst crypto investors, we at Binocs are on a mission to leverage our state-of-the-art technology platform to ease the crypto taxation journey for investors. In essence, Crypto is a web3 currency but has to comply with a web2 world of accounting principles and compliance. We are working to bridge this gap. We are elated to have several renowned global investors partner with us on this journey as we work to better the lives of crypto investors across the world.”
With over 20 million investors, India is among the top 3 crypto markets in the world and is touted to be the world’s largest market for retail investors in a few years. Even in countries such as the US (27 million crypto investors), the UK (4 million investors), and Australia (1 million), the markets are ripe for a platform that unifies the global crypto taxation and portfolio tracking system. By eliminating tricky, error-prone, and time-consuming compliance related to crypto trades and investments, Binocs’s sophisticated crypto accounting and portfolio tracking enable users to have a seamless crypto experience globally.
Anirudh Garg, Investor, BEENEXT, remarked, “As the Web3 world grows, crypto native organisations will need solutions like Binocs to help them with their compliances, accounting, and bookkeeping. 20 countries currently have tax regulations and compliances in place for cryptocurrency and there are another 50 that will implement such policies in the near future. This is a great market opportunity to build an easy-to-use, yet powerful, system early on.”
Bala Srinivasa, Managing Director, Arkam Ventures said, “We are delighted to back a world-class team at Binocs led by Tonmoy and Pankaj. It’s early days in the Web3 space and we believe Binocs has a unique opportunity to build a dominant accounting, tax, and compliance platform for consumers and enterprises.”
Atul Gupta, Partner, Premji Invest said, “There is an increasing realization among retail and institutional investors about the potential of the crypto market as evidenced by the burgeoning interest in these assets. However, the supporting infrastructure and application for the web3 world are still in a nascent stage, especially in India. We are convinced that Binocs with its one-stop solution for crypto portfolio tracking and tax management, is well poised to emerge as a leader in making investments easier for customers across the globe. Our investment in Binocs aligns with our approach to provide long-term capital to differentiated companies, and we look forward to participating in their growth journey in the coming years.”
Binocs aims to ensure accurate tax computation is executed while maintaining compliance with the latest local laws and regulations for all its users. Binocs caters to an array of transactions right from Buy / Sell trades, Staking, P2P transactions, Airdrops, and even transactions across wallets. They have recently launched features to track complex trades like Derivatives, Lending & Borrowing across CeFi and DeFi (like AAVE-v2 and more) platforms which sets them apart from the rest. With complete transparency, the algorithm breaks down the transaction fee and TDS already paid on the transactions and then calculates tax on the net amount.
Users can link their crypto portfolios via multiple sources – centralised exchanges, decentralised exchanges, wallets, and on-chains directly. They can track daily portfolio movements and portfolio value (enabled by intelligent analytics), as well as download quarterly and annual tax computation and account statements. Binocs also reconciles transactions, since inception, from multiple accounts with zero errors. Binocs is tax compliant in India, the US, the UK, Australia, and South Africa. In addition, Binocs has forged an exclusive OAuth partnership with BitBNS, the third largest crypto exchange in India. The platform is available free of cost for Indian investors currently.
Binocs is a venture-backed startup in the crypto space. It has built the latest compliance (accounting and taxes) and portfolio tracking software for crypto transactions for retail and institutional investors. The Binocs team comprises people from software engineering and corporate backgrounds at companies like Google, Amex, GE Finance, Yodlee, The Big Four companies, JP Morgan, and Goldman Sachs. Binocs uses OAuth Integration systems that provide state-of-the-art security and protect all its users’ data.
Binocs is backed by VC investors including: BEENEXT, Arkam, Accel, Saison Capital, Premji Invest, Blume and Better Capital. For more information, please visit https://binocs.co/ or follow on social media via Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook and Instagram
BEENEXT is a Venture Capital fund managed by serial entrepreneurs that focuses on assisting founders with their operational experience, network, trust, unique perspectives, and capital. The team invests in early-stage tech start-ups that are focused on building the new digital platforms driven by the data network. BEENEXT is a platform of founders, by the founders and for the founders across the globe, primarily in South East Asia, India and Japan. Since its establishment in 2015, the team has invested in over 200 companies globally. For more information, please visit www.beenext.com
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