A year since restarting its operations, WazirX has rebuilt its security and doubled down on support and products, as it sharpens its focus on reclaiming the top spot, recovering value for creditors, and optimising AI tools to help traders win more often, according to founder Nischal Shetty.
The cryptocurrency exchange relaunched in October last year after an 18-month pause that followed a 2024 cyberattack and a restructuring. WazirX is now a year into its comeback, and Shetty says the team has treated the past year as a "rebirth".
The next couple of years are about recovery, he said, adding that WazirX's AI copilot that helps traders achieve better outcomes will be central to that strategy.
In an interview, Shetty said the exchange's restart came with no template or playbook to follow.
"There's never been a startup at our level which has gone through such a long pause and then restarted," he said, adding that the team has treated the last 12 months as a "rebirth", with a mindset similar to its 2018 launch.
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This time, it had millions of users and industry experience, although there was the baggage of the cyberattack and restructuring.
For WazirX, the first fix was customer service. Shetty said the customer satisfaction score for support interactions was in the mid-60 per cent range at the time of 'restart' but has held at 90 per cent over the last three months.
On the products front, WazirX prioritised new launches. The exchange introduced a programme under which users pay a flat monthly fee (Rs 99/month) for unlimited free trading, doing away with platform charges. In India, he noted, traders already bear a one per cent TDS on sales, as well as platform charges ranging from 0.5-1 per cent.
"We have completely eliminated the trading fee," Shetty said, adding that for WazirX users, the only fee that remains is one per cent TDS on sales. He described the move as an industry-first innovation that "has worked out really well."
According to him, futures trading has been the standout for the platform. Shetty said volumes rose about 240 per cent between July and September, making it one of the most popular products.
Shetty said investors are maturing and moving beyond buying and holding coins to more advanced products. He also pointed to the one per cent TDS on sales, which locks up capital for frequent traders because it is deducted on every sale and returned only later through tax adjustment or refund. For such day traders, he said, futures offer a better opportunity.
WazirX built futures after customers began asking for it, Shetty said, but with the risks in mind: the exchange's "trade smart" campaign did not urge users to trade futures, he said, but to think before they did.
On trust, Shetty said 95 per cent of trading since the restart has come from returning users. "We knew that we were starting with a 'broken trust'. After the attack, there were people who were upset. But we also knew that a large percentage of our customers trusted us since they voted positively on our restructuring... We wanted to make sure that we win the 'trust', which meant making sure that the platform gets more stable and secure," he said.
To address the concerns, WazirX undertook security upgrades, roping in BitGo as its custody provider and beginning the integration of Fireblocks. Since the attack was on a custody provider WazirX had used, the lesson from the entire episode was to go with "the best of the best". Most cold wallet funds now sit with BitGo, one of the largest players globally, Shetty points out.
The exchange also launched 'Guardians of Trust', an initiative to educate users on securing their crypto. Shetty noted security communication needs to be continuous for a platform with millions of users.
Deposits and withdrawals, he said, have normalised now. Back around the time of the October restart, withdrawals exceeded deposits even in a rising market; Shetty says this was understandable given fears triggered at that time by the long pause. Flows have now begun tracking market sentiment now, with deposits rising in good months and withdrawals increasing in bad ones - just as they normally should.
"The increase in trust has led people to say let's use this the way we used to, before," he said.
Company data shows withdrawals have fallen 90.6 per cent since the first full month after restart.
"Overall it has been a great journey...Had you asked me to predict any of these numbers when we were restarting, I would not have predicted anywhere close to this. We have outdone ourselves, but it is a journey we are still on, and there is a long way to go," he said.
Shetty said the exchange was among the first to launch an AI conversational copilot. Users can ask whether it is the right time to enter a token, and on what data. The tool will not make investment decisions for them, he said, but can condense research that might otherwise take a day or two down to five or ten minutes.
"We've just made it very easy for people to do research and take positions now. And that, again, was an innovative feature that we brought. We're trying to build trust not by saying 'trust us', but by demonstrating it through our actions. And that's working out well for us," Shetty said.
Shetty said the company had internalised a strategy it calls 'RRR', inspired by the film, and has kept its focus on recovery, rebuilding and restarting.
The 'restart' is done and the 'rebuild' has taken 12 months. The next couple of years, he said, are about 'recovery', that is, recovering value for customers and creditors.
"No playbook, no one has done it," he said, adding that he hoped other troubled companies could learn from it.
About 60 per cent of trades on the platform today are profitable, Shetty claims, a rate he believes is healthy compared with an industry average he put at below 50 per cent.
Shetty aims to lift the share of profitable trades on the platform from 60 per cent to 70-80 per cent, supported by intelligent AI tools, though he concedes that the share would never reach 100 per cent because of market fluctuations. With exchanges now a commodity, he said, the differentiator will be helping customers "get the most out of this in terms of outcome".