Institutional BD · Crypto & Digital Assets

Ram Akathya

I build new businesses from zero.

An operator who took a crypto OTC and institutional desk from nothing to a nine-figure book, then stepped into the Group CEO's Office. This is the route so far.

$155MDesk built
100+Relationships
6Languages
1Patent filed
View my profile Case study + calculator
Or scroll to explore
2021 – 2025
Chapter 01 · The roots

Engineer, builder, leader

Amrita Vishwa Vidyapeetham, Bengaluru · B.Tech, Computer Science

An engineer who would rather build than spectate. Graduated with Distinction (CGPA 8.07), filed a patent, and published research along the way.

Led from the front as President of the Amrita Management & Leadership Club: revived the college's national multi-fest after a two-decade gap and raised serious sponsorship to make it happen.

₹1 cr+Sponsorship raised
20-yrFest gap revived
3 yrsToastmasters host
Terrain-adaptive wheel patent · 202441101552 Research & publications Booked Lost Stories & Neeti Mohan
Oct 2024 – May 2025
Chapter 02 · First expedition

0-to-1 at Hashed Emergent

Strategy & Execution Intern · Web3 venture fund & ecosystem builder
  • Scaled India Blockchain Week 2024, owning GTM, operations, and B2B sales end to end.
  • Closed 25+ partnerships across VCs, protocols, and ecosystems.
  • Converted 50+ founder communities into a ticketing funnel that drove 35% of total sales.
4,000+Attendees
$100K+Revenue in ~60 days
35%Sales via communities
Jun – Aug 2025 · Mumbai
Chapter 03 · Planting the flag

Originating the OTC vertical

Business Development Intern · CoinSwitch, HNI & OTC

Cold-originated the HNI and OTC vertical from a standing start: built the founding pipeline through direct outreach and won the earliest marquee relationships from first contact.

Sep 2025 – Apr 2026
The headline
Chapter 04 · Building the desk

CoinSwitch Alpha, from the ground up

Business Associate · HNI & OTC vertical
  • Launched CoinSwitch's OTC desk and built the HNI, family office, and institutional vertical with the trading, product, and compliance teams.
  • Owned the full cycle on every account: outbound origination, negotiation, and closing of high-value trades with family offices, UHNIs, and institutions.
  • Opened the firm's first family office, first institution, and first marquee celebrity and cricketer clients, sourced from a standing start.
  • Ran client onboarding, KYC and AML, and account setup end to end.
$155MTransaction volume closed
100+Relationships managed
3.5 QTo scale the desk
May 2026 – Present
Chapter 05 · Command center

Group CEO's Office

Senior Business Associate · PeepalCo (CoinSwitch & Lemonn)
  • Leads strategy and go-to-market for Bolt, a new Singapore-based AI trading product spanning CoinSwitch and Lemonn.
  • Partners with corporate development on market research and acquisition deals to stand up a new business line.
  • Owns weekly and monthly leadership reporting on organisation revenue health.
  • Builds executive decks and drives cross-functional work with senior leadership across both companies.
2Promotions in under a year
Intern → CEO's OfficeThe climb
My read on stablecoins

Stablecoins are the first crypto use case ordinary businesses actually need: dollar accounts and instant cross-border payouts, without the wait or the fees. The prize is not the token, it is moving real companies onto these rails. That is the 0-to-1 I want to build next.

The journey continues

Next stop: a 0-to-1 build in stablecoin-native finance. Below is exactly how I would attack it, with a working tool and a deal I closed the hard way.

Based in Bengaluru · ready to relocate to New York

See the work ↓
Case study · unprompted

How I would build KAST Business

Thesis. KAST Business wins where legacy rails hurt most: companies paying people and partners across borders, tired of slow, expensive wires. The fastest revenue is concentrated outbound to crypto-native and global-first firms that have the pain now and no treasury team to solve it for them.

Where the pain actually is

SegmentThe pain (hypothesis)Buying signal to qualify onIllustrative candidates
Remote-first crypto startups, Seed to Series A (~20 to 200 people)Paying global engineers and contractors through wires and exchanges, with no finance or treasury hire yetRecent raise, hiring ops and engineering across multiple countries, no treasury lead on the teamNewly funded L2, wallet, and dev-tooling teams
Web3 gaming, GameFi, and guildsPaying players, scholars, and creators across many countries in small, frequent amountsActive player economy or scholarship program, large global communityGaming guilds and mid-size studios (for example, Yield Guild Games)
Crypto creator agencies, talent networks, and emerging-market agenciesHigh-volume cross-border payouts to creators or staff in high-inflation marketsMany international payees, talent or clients paid in USDWeb3 creator and influencer agencies, talent collectives

The wedge that gets the meeting

  • Speed and transparency. Payouts with FX, fees, and timing shown upfront, versus opaque multi-day wires.
  • One stack. USD virtual accounts, global payouts, and card spend on one platform instead of stitched-together tools.
  • Stablecoin-native. Receive in USDC or USDT, hold in USD, pay out locally, without forcing conversion before spend.

Sample outbound, built on a trigger

Cold email
Subject: paying your team across [N] countries?

Hi [name], congrats on the [round] raise. Teams scaling headcount across borders this fast usually hit the same wall: paying engineers and contractors by wire is slow, and the FX quietly takes 2 to 3 percent. KAST Business runs payouts on stablecoin rails, USD in, local currency out, fees and timing shown upfront. Worth 15 minutes to see what it saves at your current payee count? Ram, KAST Business.

LinkedIn note

Saw [company] just raised and is hiring across [regions]. We help teams at exactly that stage pay people globally without the wire tax. Open to a quick compare?

Cold-call opener

Hi [name], Ram from KAST Business, I will be brief. You just raised and you are hiring across [regions], so I am guessing paying that team is already a headache. We move USD across borders on stablecoin rails, faster and cheaper than wires. Is payout speed and cost a live problem, or are you sorted?

First 90 days in seat

DAY 30

Lock the ICP, validate the top 50 accounts, reach product mastery, ship the outbound sequences above.

DAY 60

200-plus accounts in active outbound, first qualified pipeline built, messaging refined by early win and loss.

DAY 90

First closed logos plus a documented, repeatable playbook the next hires can run.

Candidate accounts and pain points are qualification hypotheses based on public profiles, not confirmed needs. The first job in seat is to validate or kill each one. Feature scope, country coverage, and fees should be confirmed against KAST before quoting to a prospect.
Proof

Case study: the firm's first family office

$10MInvested
6 monthsFirst contact to close
Back-to-backClients unlocked after

The situation

CoinSwitch had no OTC desk and no family-office relationships when I started building the vertical. This would be the firm's first family office, opened from a standing start with no playbook to copy.

The challenge

In India the obstacle was not price, it was trust and awareness. Crypto was barely understood inside family-office circles, and confidence in the ecosystem was shaken: two of the country's three major exchanges had been compromised. Winning this account meant educating a cautious, sophisticated buyer and earning trust in a category that had burned people.

The approach

Six months of disciplined, continuous outreach. I built and shared education materials, decks, and tailored follow-ups, coming back again and again to answer questions, meet the security concerns head on, and show why CoinSwitch was different. KYC, AML, and account setup ran with compliance, product, and trading so the path stayed safe and clear at every step.

The outcome

After six months of patience and persistence they committed $10M. The bigger win was what it unlocked: earning a respected family office's trust opened their circle, and that credibility carried into back-to-back closes from the introductions it created.

The lesson I carry into KAST: with conservative buyers, trust is the product. Win the first one properly and the network follows.

Live tool

The savings story, calculated

A working version of the pitch: enter a prospect's cross-border payout volume and see what moving from wires to stablecoin rails could save. Every assumption is editable, so it stays honest.

Assumptions (illustrative, edit to match reality)
$0Estimated annual savings
$0Saved per month
—Settlement
Wires
KAST

Defaults reflect public benchmarks: traditional cross-border payouts run about 3 to 5 percent all-in and settle in 3 to 5 days, while stablecoin rails carry near-zero network fees, a small FX spread, and settle in minutes. KAST publishes 0 percent stablecoin deposits and a 0.5 to 1.75 percent FX fee on non-USD. KAST Business pricing is still early, so confirm the real numbers before using this with a prospect.

Let us build something

Open to founding-caliber BD and go-to-market roles in crypto and stablecoin finance.

The toolkit
Institutional Sales Business Development Strategic Partnerships Key Account Management OTC Trading Desk Client Onboarding KYC / AML Coordination Deal Negotiation Go-to-Market Strategy
Six languages, high-touch by default
English Hindi Tamil Telugu Kannada Malayalam
Email Ram LinkedIn +91 86189 41856