T-block Accelerator wrapped up the Bootcamp with 28 expert mentors and 16 incredible startups
We’re excited to share some more updates with you about the T-block Accelerator. We finished off the Bootcamp phase with 16 of the selected startups who are ready to pitch for the internal Demo Day. We’d like to walk you through the process and introduce you to the mentors who supported and evaluated the startups.
The One-on-One Sessions and the Selection Criteria
The one-on-one sessions were brought about to get to know the startups, the solutions they were providing, find their problem areas, and help them work with solutions. The startups were put in touch with relevant mentors from T-block’s pool of experts based on the industry verticals and tech assistance. The mentors got to know the startups based on:
- How well do the founders know their businesses and their present plans and strategies
- How well the founders know the industry
- How strong is the startup’s blockchain use case
Based on their performance, the startups were evaluated on various criteria that involved:
- Product value prop
- Founder-product fit
- Market and product economics
- Early traction
- Depth of understanding the problem statement
- Industry access and knowledge
- Sales and marketing prowess
- Competitive advantage
- The validity and feasibility of the blockchain use case
- Capability to implement
Startups that showed promise in these areas were considered to be in the running.
Meet the T-block’s 30 Expert Mentors
Our mentors are part of a community of accomplished individuals from various industry verticals who helped the participating startups:
- build their business strategies;
- strengthen their industry knowledge;
- fine-tune their products and service offerings;
- build their blockchain technology layers based on their use cases.
Here are the mentors of the T-block Accelerator:
Industry Experts
Raghavendra Deshmukh, Director — Software Development, SAP
Raghavendra Deshmukh — has built a formidable authority in supply chain management & tech. With over 20+ years of experience in the IT space, he is a skilled and accomplished veteran who has a penchant for emerging technologies (like blockchain and IoT) and their adoption among the masses. He is presently working at SAP, heading the software development team.
Mohan Ramaswamy — Co-founder, Terrago Logistics Pvt Ltd
Mohan Ramaswamy is the expert in the supply chain tech space. He is an experienced founder and has demonstrated history working in the consumer services industry. His starting-up experience helped the T-block startups scale-up with great products and services. Presently, he is heading Terrago Logistics.
Vivek Prakash — Co-founder, HackerEarth
Vivek Prakash is a quintessential example of a startup person given that he co-founded HackerEarth. He has a deep understanding of how startups work and has great insight into the mindset of developers. He took the role of the CTO of HackerEarth, headed the technology, product & the design team to create India’s leading hackathon platform.
Dhanajai Hari — Head of Product Marketing, GamesKraft
Dhanajai is a marketing and general management professional with over +7 years of experience across both startups and established businesses spaces. He has worked across various industry verticals that include sports content, the automotive sectors and he also holds expertise as a professional in the gaming industry. He holds in-depth knowledge in scaling businesses across various categories and worked in product management, brand and content management with a focus on increasing revenue and user experience.
Sandeep Varma — Head of Innovation, DBS Bank
Sandeep is professional with over 20 years of experience working in various management and leadership roles, building his expertise in enabling innovation. He has worked across categories such as micro-insurance strategy, growth management and building business inclusive business strategies aimed at scaling up. He has also designed and managed a USAID-funded project to promote Women’s Leadership in SMEs focusing on rural women entrepreneurs, and he also set up a programme to build capacity and raise funding for early-stage social entrepreneurs.
John deVadoss — Head of Development — NEO Blockchain
John deVadoss is a veteran engineer who has worked across several technology verticals. As a serial entrepreneur, he has co-founded a few startups in the machine learning and the blockchain space. He is responsible for building Microsoft’s Solutions Architecture capability and incubated & scaled their Digital Transformation business. He is presently the Head of Development at the NEO Blockchain.
Rajiv has 25+ years of experience in creating robust iterative development plans for long term business strategy while resolving key operational issues. His expertise is focused on business transformation through digital & technological interventions, infusing artificial intelligence and machine learning for improving process efficiency and maximising operational productivity. He is presently working as the Head of Revenue Assurance at Aditya Birla
Amber Gupta — Head Legal and Company Secretary, Aditya Birla Sun Life Insurance
Amber Gupta comes with two decades-worth of experience in the fields of legal, Compliance, Regulation, Contract Management, dispute resolution, Litigation Management and corporate secretarial. He is passionate about new age technology laws and FinTech resolution, data privacy, financial services supervision and governance, and alternate dispute resolution.
Vardhan Koshal — Product Ace, Entrepreneur
Vardhan Koshal is a product person with vast experience in the startup space. He has worked with Fampay — a YCombinator & Sequoia Capital-supported startup as a strategic consultant. Presently, he is working on a new initiative in the entertainment space.
Pranav Sharma — Co-founder & Managing Partner, Woodstock Fund
Pranav Sharma has built a formidable expertise in the investment space. With over 18 years of experience, is various categories like Strategic Business Planning, Financial Modelling, Investment Memo, Credit Risk Management, and more. He is presently working with Woodstock Ventures as the Managing Partner and Co-founder to support and enable innovation in the blockchain technology space.
Hemendra Mathur — Venture Partner, Bharat Innovation Fund
Hemendra Mathur is a veteran in the venture capital space. With 24+ years of experience, he has a skill set that is packed with experience in end-to-end venture capital services, private equity, investment banking and management consulting.
Trishant Sidhwani — Partner, Dreamzkraft, & Co-founder, Flickbay
Trishant Sidhwani is an entrepreneur, investor, & film enthusiast. He has worked in the Bollywood space with the leading production company — Excel Entertainment. He is also heading operations at Dreamzkraft — an event management company that specialises in wedding planning, decor and styling.
Rohas Nagpal — Chief Blockchain Architect, Primechain Technologies, & Co-founder, meraQR
Rohas Nagpal is the Chief Blockchain Architect at Primechain Technologies with a reputable background in cybercrime investigation and security since the mid-1990s. He developed an interest in virtual currencies in 2011 while investigating a case of organised criminals using bitcoin. Since 2015, he has been working extensively in the blockchain / distributed ledger technology domain. Presently, he is pursuing a brand new endeavour with meraQR.
Prashanth Swaminathan — CEO, Tandem
Prashanth Swaminathan is an expert in structured finance and a highly capable engineer, who takes the reins of running Tandem — p2p mobile app that facilitates BTC/crypto trading. As a veteran investment banker, Prashanth has over a decade of experience in the field and last held the position of Executive Director at Morgan Stanley, London.
Shyam Doddavula — Associate Vice President, Principal Product Architect, Blockchain CoE, Infosys
Shyam has a multi-dimensional subject matter expertise in areas of tech that includes Blockchains, Machine Learning, Big Data, Cloud Computing, among others. He is also adept in Enterprise Application Framework Development. Shyam is an Infosys veteran of over 18 years, and is a graduate from NIT Warangal and Texas Tech University.
Sandeep Raghuwanshi — CEO, ESGRobo
Sandeep Raghuwanshi — CEO, EsgRobo, is an investment banker turned professional sustainability advocate with 20+ years of experience. He has worked as Head of M&A at a $500m F&B company among other roles. He possesses a deep understanding of emerging technologies and is applying them to solve the sustainability challenges at scale. He has lived and worked in Europe, Middle East, Sub Saharan Africa, and Asia Pac besides India.
Business Experts
Raghu Mohan — CEO of IBC Media, is a startup person with a vast understanding of building emerging tech ecosystems. He has over ten years of experience working as a marketer, with a tech background, in the early teams of several notable brands like HackerEarth and YourStory. He is heading IBC Media with an awesome bunch of people, to enable innovation in technology.
Vasudhendra Badami — CMO, IBC Media
Vasudhendra has a reputation for creating and executing end-to-end marketing plans. He has an affinity for building wholesome and purposeful campaigns that will benefit its target audience and the IBC Media brand. He is an ace marketing professional with a penchant for driving growth and sales. He has showcased his expertise by working with notable brands like HackerEarth and NiYo.
Ravi Vyas — Product Veteran, Serial Entrepreneur
Ravi Vyas is a veteran product development professional. He has a vast background in building remarkable products. He was the CPO of YourStory — one of India’s leading publications, prior to which he headed the product teams at MoEngage Inc. and Vserv.mobi. He also established PureMetrics, a platform that provided solutions for core problems in mobile app analytics, cost & complexity.
Ajay Chakravarthy — Ad Tech Expert & Entrepreneur
Ajay Chakravarthy is an entrepreneur who is specialising in the ad tech space. He is adept in the fields of marketing, investments, and business development, gained from 12+ years of professional experience. Ajay has built an acumen for executing and creating strategies to scale businesses from the ground up.
Tech Experts
Shreyansh Singh — Marketing Lead, Matic Network
Shreyansh is a skilled marketer and communicator. He has helped to build and curate a positive and productive community for the Matic Network. On beginning his career with one of India’s foremost players in the blockchain space, Shreyansh has a good understanding of what goes into community building and marketing operations at a fast-paced blockchain initiative like the Matic Network.
Sandeep Nailwal — COO and Co-founder, Matic Network
Sandeep Nailwal is a skilled professional in the blockchain technology space. With over 10 years of experience, he has honed an aptitude in various categories like business development, product management, product engineering and more. At the Matic Network, he is working with his team to fuel user adoption and build scalability by onboarding decentralised applications.
Om Malviya — President, Tezos India Foundation
Om is an accomplished individual in India’s blockchain circles. Before joining Tezos India Foundation as its President, Om co-founded Tezsure — an insurtech startup, which is also one of the first projects being built on Tezos. He is also a published researcher about blockchain scalability and Co-founder of itsblockchain.com, one of the first blockchain media and knowledge portals in India.
Aman Malhotra — General Manager — Blockchain Platforms and Alliances, Tech Mahindra
Aman is a seasoned professional who has formidable leadership experience owing to a career that is 14+ years. His expertise is spread across IT, BPM and Banking industries. He has extensive experience in exploring blockchain technology to identify pan-industry use cases such as BFSI, CME, Manufacturing, Retail, Healthcare, Telecom, Oil & Gas and Logistics.
Saurabh Arora — Business Lead and Consultant, Tech Mahindra
Saurabh is a technology fabulist with (10+ years) extensive experience in consulting on emerging technologies and helping organisations deploy digital solutions. Saurabh’s expertise spans across consulting, pre-sales solutioning, recommendations, and implementation roadmap.
Dharmen Dhulla — Senior Solutions Architect — Blockchain COE, Tech Mahindra
Dharmen is a professional with formidable experience in several technology verticals. With over 18 years of business technology leadership in notable brands like Tech Mahindra, IBM & Oracle, he is recognised for innovation management, his expertise in Cloud, tech architecture, enterprise blockchain solutions, ERP & large-scale execution. He has been instrumental in major Digital transformations involving cost reductions, efficiency, agility & competitive advantage for Fortune 500 firms.
Pooja Gautam — Blockchain Consultant, Tech Mahindra
Pooja is a professional consultant involved with all things blockchain. On starting her career in the blockchain space over a year ago, she is honing a significant skill set to enable the adoption and implementation of blockchain technology for enterprise-Level clients at Tech Mahindra.
Pushkar Pradhan — Senior Business Consultant, Tech Mahindra
Pushkar Pradhan is a pro blockchain consultant with expertise in digital banking, mobile banking and core banking. He is part of the Blockchain CoE at Tech Mahindra and helps create blockchain-based solutions for industry and enterprise-level players. He is also instrumental in supporting businesses in the implementation of PoCs and pilots for customers on varied business processes that require blockchain technology.
Closing Thoughts
In the midst of the pandemic, we’re all working hard to push the T-block Accelerator to support as many startups as we can. We’ve got to be honest, it isn’t a bed of roses. It was pretty tough for us to virtually conduct the Bootcamp. Some startups chose to drop out of the running due to personal reasons, conflict of interest, and time constraints. However, we’re a team of driven individuals who are learning along every step of this journey. We are ever so grateful to the mentors who worked with us to mentor the T-block cohort (of startups) to the incredible startup teams, we’re so happy to have worked with all of you talented visionaries.
We’re ready to share the shortlisted startups who will join us for the Internal Demo Day and share an exciting agenda of events with you. Stay Tuned!
