We build ICO platforms for Indian founders, token contracts, vesting, a KYC-ready investor dashboard, and the documentation your lawyer and your exchange will both ask for. Team in Jaipur, working on IST.
Shalu Swami is the Director of Coin Developer India, a premier blockchain development company, specializing in cutting-edge blockchain protocols and crypto exchanges. A veteran strategist, she oversees the deployment of secure trading platforms, smart contracts, and liquid cryptocurrency products. She is expert in tokenizing Real-World Assets (RWAs), building secure crypto exchanges, and deploying compliant Web3 ecosystems.
Last updated: 20 August 2026
An ICO (Initial Coin Offering) is a fundraising method where a blockchain project creates its own token and sells it directly to buyers, usually in exchange for cryptocurrency, before the product is fully launched.
The token is issued and distributed by a smart contract, so allocation, pricing, and vesting rules are enforced by code rather than by a bank or a broker.
Unlike an IDO or an IEO, an ICO is self-hosted. The project controls its own sale page, its own rounds, and its own investor list; no launchpad approval and no exchange listing fee, but also no third party doing the vetting for you. That trade-off is why an ICO usually suits early-stage teams, and why credibility has to be built through documentation, audits, and vesting instead.
Most ICO pages skip this. It's the first thing an Indian founder should read, so we've put it near the top with sources you can verify yourself.
Short version: India has not banned crypto and has not passed an ICO-specific law. Virtual Digital Assets (VDAs) are taxed and covered by anti-money-laundering rules, but they are not regulated as a financial product and are not legal tender. That's a grey area, not a green light to take a written legal opinion before you raise a single rupee from Indian residents.
| What | Where it comes from | What it means for an ICO |
|---|---|---|
| 30% flat tax on VDA transfer income, plus surcharge and 4% cess (≈31.2%) | Section 115BBH, Income-tax Act, 1961 (Finance Act 2022) | Only the cost of acquisition is deductible. Development cost, marketing spend, and gas fees are not. |
| No loss set-off or carry-forward | Section 115BBH | A loss on one token cannot offset a gain on another, or on any other income. |
| 1% TDS on transfers above ₹10,000 a year (₹50,000 for specified persons) | Section 194S | Affects how contributions and token distributions are structured and recorded. |
| Schedule VDA reporting in the income tax return | CBDT ITR forms | Transactions are reported line by line and cross-checked against exchange data. |
| From 1 April 2026, the Income-tax Act, 2025 replaces the 1961 Act | Income-tax Act, 2025 (assented 21 August 2025) | The 30% VDA tax treatment carries forward unchanged, but the underlying section numbers are renumbered across the new Act's 536 sections. Filings for Tax Year 2026-27 onward will reference the new numbering, not "115BBH." |
| FIU-IND registration mandatory for VDA service providers | Ministry of Finance notification, 7 March 2023, under PMLA 2002 | Entities that exchange, transfer, safekeep, or help issue VDAs for Indian users are reporting entities. |
| Risk-based due diligence, investor disclosure, and market-manipulation safeguards | FIU-IND AML & CFT Guidelines for VDA service providers upgraded on January 8, 2026 | A smart contract does not remove these obligations. |
Important: Two numbers that show how seriously this is being enforced: as of 9 March 2026, 54 Virtual Digital Asset Service Providers were registered with FIU-IND, and in the same window FIU-IND had directed the takedown of 53 unregistered VDA exchanges. India has an estimated 100 million-plus retail crypto users being served by that small set of registered entities. (Data as of 9 March 2026. Source: Cyril Amarchand Mangaldas, FIG Paper No. 57, VDA Series 11, May 2026.)
Sources: Income Tax Department, Income-tax Act, 2025, Financial Intelligence Unit – India (FIU-IND),
A practical picture of the options we see, so you can have a more informed conversation with your lawyer.
A domestic private limited company runs the sale. Simplest for banking and GST, but it puts you squarely inside the VDA tax regime and the PMLA reporting question.
The token is issued from a jurisdiction with a defined token framework; commonly UAE, Singapore, or Estonia, while product and engineering stay in India.
India's own International Financial Services Centre has been building a regulatory perimeter for fintech. Worth asking your counsel about if you want to stay onshore.
Four ways to issue a token. They differ mainly in who controls the sale and who does the vetting.
| Factor | ICO | IDO | IEO | STO |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Who hosts the sale | Your own platform | DEX or launchpad | Centralised exchange | Regulated platform |
| Control over pricing & rounds | Full | Limited by pool mechanics | Set with the exchange | Within regulatory limits |
| External approval needed | None | Launchpad vetting | Strict exchange due diligence | Regulator approval |
| Typical cost | Lowest | Medium liquidity funded | Highest listing fees | High legal dominates |
| Liquidity at launch | You arrange it | Immediate via pool | Immediate on exchange | Limited, often restricted |
| KYC handled by | You | Sometimes launchpad | The exchange | Mandatory, documented |
| Token type | Usually utility | Usually utility | Usually utility | Security by design |
| Best suited to | Early-stage teams building a community | DeFi-native projects | Projects with traction and budget | Asset-backed offerings |
For most Indian projects this comes down to one question: can your smallest expected ticket size survive the gas fee?
| Chain | Standard | Transfer cost | Wallet & exchange support | Good fit for |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Ethereum | ERC-20 | Highest | Widest of any chain | Large raises, institutional-facing |
| BNB Chain | BEP-20 | Very low | Very wide | Retail-heavy Indian community sales |
| Polygon | ERC-20 on PoS | Very low | Wide | Consumer apps, gaming, small tickets |
| Solana | SPL | Very low | Wide and growing | High-throughput consumer products |
| TRON | TRC-20 | Low | Strong for stablecoin flows | Payment and remittance tokens |
| TON | Jetton | Low | Telegram-native | Community distribution via Telegram |
Everything that has to be finished, tested, and documented before the sale page goes live.
We start by asking what the token is actually for. If the product doesn't need a token, we'll say that conversation saves more money than any discount.
Supply, allocation buckets, cliff periods, and release curves modelled in a spreadsheet you can interrogate before we write any code.
Technology, token utility, use of funds, team, roadmap, and a genuine risk-factors section. Serious investors read that section first.
Token, sale, vesting, and treasury contracts built on audited open-source libraries. Multi-signature admin control as standard.
Static analysis, internal review, then a third-party audit coordinated on your behalf. Full sale rehearsal before mainnet.
Sale page, wallet connection, live round tracker, contribution history, referral module, and a full admin panel.
Identity verification, sanctions screening, and geo-restriction wired into the sale flow, so ineligible wallets cannot contribute.
MetaMask, WalletConnect, Trust Wallet, and Coinbase Wallet, with multi-asset contributions and a fiat on-ramp where permitted.
The sale closing is the start of the work, not the end of it.
Airdrop and claim contracts, batch distribution, and scheduled vesting releases executed exactly as documented.
Contract verification, metadata, assets, and applications for CEX, DEX, CoinMarketCap, and CoinGecko. We prepare and apply, we do not promise outcomes.
DEX pair creation with locked LP tokens and a published lock proof, so holders can verify independently.
Automated alerts on large transfers, admin calls, and unusual activity incidents caught in minutes, not days.
Bug fixes, security updates, new sale rounds, staking, and governance modules as the project grows.
Exportable contribution records in the format your CA needs for Schedule VDA filing and TDS reconciliation.
Some agencies advertise "coin price pump" or guaranteed-return services. We do not offer them. Artificially moving a token's price misleads buyers, and market-manipulation safeguards are an explicit compliance expectation under FIU-IND's AML/CFT guidelines for VDA service providers. We would rather lose the enquiry than build that.
Eight stages from first call to token generation event. Typical timeline: 25-30 working days for a standard build, longer with a third-party audit.
Define the token's purpose, target raise, jurisdiction, and investor profile. If a token isn't the right instrument, this is where we say so.
We work alongside your lawyer and CA on entity structure, KYC/AML obligations, and Indian VDA tax exposure before architecture is locked.
Supply, allocation, cliffs, vesting curves, and dilution modelling signed off in writing before development starts.
Whitepaper, litepaper, and one-pager, including an honest use-of-funds breakdown and risk factors.
Built on audited libraries, with multi-signature admin control and no hidden mint function.
Static analysis, internal review, third-party audit, remediation, then a complete sale rehearsal on testnet.
Website, dashboard, KYC flow, and admin panel go live. Mainnet deployment and contract verification.
Token generation event, distribution, listing documentation, monitoring, and maintenance.
Named tools, not vague claims, so you can verify what your contracts are actually built on.
Solidity, Rust (Solana), Vyper
Hardhat, Foundry, Truffle, Anchor
OpenZeppelin Contracts, OpenZeppelin Upgrades
Slither, Mythril, Echidna, manual peer review
CertiK, QuillAudits (QuillHash)
React, Next.js, ethers.js, wagmi, web3.js
MetaMask, WalletConnect, Trust Wallet, Coinbase Wallet, Phantom
Alchemy, Infura, IPFS / Pinata, The Graph
Chainlink Price Feeds
Jumio and Sumsub
Indicative packages. Final quote depends on chain, rounds, and compliance scope.
| What's Included | Starter | Growth Recommended | Enterprise |
|---|---|---|---|
| Token contract (ERC-20 / BEP-20 / TRC-20 / SPL) | |||
| Token sale smart contract | |||
| Contract verification on block explorer | |||
| ICO landing page | |||
| Investor dashboard | Basic | Full | Full + Custom |
| Admin panel with round controls | — | ||
| Multiple sale rounds | — | ||
| Vesting & lock-up contracts | — | ||
| KYC / AML integration | — | ||
| Whitelist / blacklist & geo-restriction | — | ||
| Multi-signature treasury control | — | ||
| Referral & bonus module | — | ||
| Tokenomics modelling document | — | ||
| Whitepaper writing | Add-on | Add-on | |
| Third-party security audit | Add-on | Add-on | At actuals |
| Testnet rehearsal | |||
| Exchange listing documentation | — | ||
| Post-launch support | 25-30 Working days | 25-30 Working days | Retainer |
| Source code & ownership transfer | |||
| Get Quote | Get Quote | Get Quote |
Costs paid to third parties, billed at actuals: smart contract audit, exchange listing fees, liquidity funding, KYC provider subscription, domain and hosting, and deployment gas fees. Passed through without markup, with invoices. GST as applicable.
We're a development company in Jaipur, not a marketing agency with a dev team attached. Here's what that means in practice.
Our engineers sit in Jaipur. Call during Indian business hours, get a reply the same day, meet the people writing your contracts.
We won't hand you a token contract and let you discover Section 115BBH and FIU-IND registration afterwards. We flag it on the first call.
Contracts built on OpenZeppelin, reviewed with Slither and Mythril, rehearsed end to end on testnet before mainnet.
Repository access, deployer keys, admin credentials, and IP transfer to you at handover. NDA signed before the project starts.
Third-party costs like audits and listing fees are passed through at actuals with invoices, not marked up and buried.
The token model changes with the product.
Governance and fee-sharing tokens with staking and emission schedules.
Dual-token economies separating in-game currency from the governance asset.
Fractional ownership models usually the ones needing the most legal work.
Utility tokens powering marketplace fees, minting credits, and creator rewards.
Low-fee transfer tokens and stablecoin-adjacent designs.
Traceability platforms where the token drives network participation.
Compute and infrastructure networks that reward contributed resources.
Membership and access tokens for creator-led communities.
Our office is in Jaipur, Rajasthan, and we work with founders in Delhi NCR, Mumbai, Bengaluru, Hyderabad, Pune, Ahmedabad, Chennai, and Kolkata.
Discovery and review calls run on IST over Google Meet or Zoom. We're also available on WhatsApp and Telegram through the working day.
Tell us what you're building and who it's for. We'll tell you whether a token makes sense, what it will realistically cost, how long it will take, and which compliance questions to put in front of your lawyer first.
Got a blockchain idea in mind? Our expertise is the key to achieving it! We help you navigate the complexities seamlessly and deliver solutions that don’t just function; they transform. Take the first step with our experts!
Coin Developer India is a leading cryptocurrency development company having experience of 7+ years in providing blockchain solutions. We are known for offering the top-notch customized blockchain development services to serve our clients as per their business requirements.
