Hatch Web3 Accelerator for Hedera, launched by Lumos Labs in partnership with The HBAR Foundation, announced its top 3 winners , Karpine, Stream Money and a.live for its first cohort. The winners are set to gain $50,000 each along with ecosystem and marketing support in addition to the expert guidance provided to them during the course of this accelerator.
The first cohort of the Hatch Web3 Accelerator for Hedera attracted over 500 unique startups from which 20 were shortlisted for a month-long intensive Bootcamp phase where leading industry experts held frequent mentor sessions along with several meetups and workshops that helped these solutions integrate seamlessly with the Hedera ecosystem. Hedera is the enterprise grade public distributed ledger network that provides the fastest, most secure and greenest environment for startups to build their Web3 solutions.
Out of the 20 shortlisted startups, 5 creative innovations were selected for the Demo Day on which they presented their solutions to the judging panel inclusive of industry experts like Kaavya Prasad, Rob Allen, Niko Leontakianakos , Viv Diwakar, Vignesh Rajan, Ishita Srivastava, Tanay Jain and Pareen Lathia.
India has a rapidly-growing Web3 ecosystem with more than 450 active start-ups in the space that raised $1.3 billion in funding till April as per the Nasscom 2022 report. The Indian Web3 ecosystem has fostered rapid acceleration of innovations and has become one of the global key players of the Web3 landscape. With a large developer potential and an active Web3 startup space, India is rife with opportunities and has grabbed the attention of leading global players who are entering the market to become a central player in the sector.
“The HBAR Foundation’s key objective has been to empower entrepreneurs to build economies on the Hedera Network. We have strived towards sustainability and growth of the Web3 startup sector. As a leading enterprise grade network, one of the key objectives for Hedera and the HBAR Foundation is fostering the innovative and entrepreneurial spirit and the massively growing Indian Web3 ecosystem is the perfect fit for us. The first edition of the Hatch Web3 Accelerator is a step towards leveraging this potential and we are thrilled by the record responses and the ingenious solutions with real-world applicability. We congratulate the top projects best aligned with our ecosystem offerings and hope that with the mentoring and the grants, they are prepared to expand their horizons. We will be returning with our next cohort soon.” – Rob Allen, SVP, The HBAR Foundation
“Lumos Labs has been a strong and vocal proponent of web3 innovations. Over the years, we have had the opportunity to observe the rapid growth of the Indian web3 startups and projects. With the large pool of highly skilled digital talent in India, a growing startup ecosystem, and continuous adoption of new-age technologies, the country has become one of the key players in the global Web3 market. With the Hatch Web3 Accelerator, we are glad to partner with Hedera and the HBAR Foundation to nurture web3 startups with futuristic offerings even further with the right guidance and mentorship.” – Kaavya Prasad, Founder, Lumos Labs
The HBAR Foundation is a non-profit grant giving organisation focused on supporting builders and creators in the Hedera ecosystem. With this accelerator program, it is focused on strengthening the Indian Web3 startup ecosystem by helping founders overcome the challenges of bringing their ideas to market.
The Accelerator participants also received expertise and web development support from Amazon Web Services (AWS) and expertise in legal aspects of starting up as a Web3 company, understanding the nuances in taxation and auditing for Web3 startups from PwC. To further augment this, We Founder Circle, Woodstock Fund, Fracton Ventures, Mapleblock and CoinDCX also joined this Accelerator program as VC Partners.
Founded in 2021, the HBAR Foundation fuels the development of the Hedera ecosystem by providing grants and other resources to developers, startups and organizations that seek to launch decentralized applications in DeFi, NFTs, CBDCs, sustainability, gaming and other sectors. In addition to providing funding through a streamlined grant process, the HBAR Foundation acts as an integrated force multiplier through expert support across technical, marketing, business development and other operational functions that are required to scale.
The Hedera network is the most used, sustainable, enterprise-grade public ledger for the decentralized economy. The platform is governed by a council of the world’s leading organizations, including ABRDN, Avery Dennison, Boeing, Chainlink Labs, DBS Bank, Dentons, Deutsche Telekom, DLA Piper, EDF (Électricité de France), eftpos, FIS (WorldPay), Google, IBM, the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), LG Electronics, Magalu, Nomura Holdings, ServiceNow, Shinhan Bank, Standard Bank Group, Swirlds, Tata Communications, Ubisoft, University College London (UCL), Wipro, and Zain Group.
