From Developer to Startup Founder: Rishabh’s exhilarating Web3 journey | DevStories
Meet Rishabh Keshan, aka nftindian.eth; a Web3 degen, developer, marketer, and strategist essentially wearing several hats in times of need. He began his Web3 Journey by participating in hackathons and trading NFTs with friends. His professional career began as a frontend developer at Capx and right now he is a Web3 Product Lead at Hungama Digital. He is a fourth-year Computer Science student at VIT Vellore with exceptional skills and knowledge and it’s an incredible tale to tell.
Let’s get to know Rishabh and we hope his story inspires you.
How did you discover blockchain technology? What made you step into this ecosystem?
I first discovered blockchain technology during my college days, when Matic (now Polygon) sponsored some hackathon tracks and gave away their merchandise. This piqued my interest, and I started researching more about it. Then I met my senior Abhitej Singh, who is also the Cosmos India Head and he introduced me to the blockchain space. I got to know about IBC and started diving deep into these ecosystems and eventually started taking part in hackathons and won several of them.
Another senior from college, Elio, has been very helpful in getting me onboarded onto the dev side of Web3. I have been part of the Filecoin Grants Program and have worked with Elio in the past to build IntoTheVerse, a metaverse RPG game on the Celo Blockchain. Additionally, I was a Tezos India Fellow in 2021, where I developed an asset management app with a college friend. While looking for places to invest the money I earned from these hacks, another friend introduced me to NFTs, which led me to delve even deeper into the ecosystem.
What was your first-ever Web3 hackathon experience like?
Hack Money 2021, by ETH Global, was my first Web3 Hack, where our team built a decentralized pay-as-you-watch video platform. It was an amazing experience as we formed the team through the discord “find-a-team” channel, and none of us knew each other except Elio and me. It was fun coordinating and building remotely with everyone. We won the 1st Prize under the IPFS track.
How has work-life been for you?
I am currently working as the Web3 Product Lead at Hungama, where we are building our Entertainment 3.0 destination HeftyVerse, making entertainment a more interactive, immersive, and engaging experience for users. Around February last year, I sought to embark on a larger project or pursue something of my own, and that’s when I discovered an opportunity at Hungama. After my HR conversation, the CEO and Product Head interviewed me and a few other candidates. They loved the vision I had, and I got through. Since then, we have had a lot of iterations and have worked on multiple products, with our current focus being metaverse with us building our verse and collaborating with Sandbox to build BharatBox.
We have created a mobile-first experience keeping in mind the Indian audience and ease of access being the forefront. As we advance, we will be adding a lot of gamification on the platform, with one of the aims being bringing stars closer to their fans, hosting live concerts, fan meetups, brand engagement and experiences, and more. We are currently in our beta and you can check out the platform on the world. hefty verse.xyz.
Apart from this, a few friends and I co-founded NHDAO, a DAO that provides marketing, strategy, and community services to other projects in the ecosystem. Adinalini, founder of NHDAO introduced me to NFTs, and ever since then, we have been trading and flipping NFTs together. Currently, we are working with AssetMantle, an IBC chain, to expand their community and help them launch their NFT projects.
I am also working on two other projects, namely nftix, an event ticketing system built on the AssetMantle chain, and Sorobix, a Soroban Smart Contract IDE on the Stellar blockchain. Both our teams are part of the Grants program of the chains and plan to launch our beta for public access by Q2 of 2023.
Lastly, I am a member of Superteam by Solana Foundation and currently mentoring devs at Buildstation BLR. Buildstation is a developer-guidance program for teams participating in Solana Grizzlython. During this month-long hackathon, we are helping developers to get onboarded to Solana and help them with any blockers they face while building.
Numerous things are going on in parallel, and I am enjoying the hustle.
Any interesting college clubs that you are/were a part of?
I was the chairperson of ACM-VIT, a technical chapter in my college. This place is my second home, where I learned everything, from tech to people management to teamwork. We used to conduct a lot of hackathons, mentor sessions, and projects in our chapter, with Code2Create being our flagship hackathon.
ACM-VIT has been an instrumental stepping stone in my Web3 journey, allowing me to connect with several seniors and friends, including Abhitej, Hemanth, Adinalini, Madhur, and Elio, with whom I am presently working or have worked with previously. I still vividly remember the day I looked up the full forms of HTML and CSS on my phone just before my interview to join the chapter.
During my interview with Aditya, the then Web Lead, I honestly acknowledged my lack of experience in web development but expressed my eagerness to learn. He saw the spark in me and accepted me into the chapter. Since then, I have been proud of my incredible growth trajectory, and I attribute much of it to the support and guidance of many friends and seniors who were there for me every step of the way.
What was the project that won your team a place in the Buidl for Web3 Hack 2022?
During Buidl for Web3, our team 30percenttax built nftix.
NFTIX is a decentralized NFT-based event ticketing platform that facilitates easy NFT event ticket issuing and easy check-ins using AssetMantle blockchain and MantleWallet.
A user would just need to signup with their username and password and a wallet would be generated for them which they can further use to get started with minting NFTs as tickets for their favorite events. They can also keep a track of external unlockable content like free goodies and schwag that the organizers provide and which are associated with the NFT.
The following are its other features -
- Easy onboarding of users onto a web3 app using email-based signup
- Fully non-custodial wallets, your keys belong to you because “Not your keys, not your assets”
- Easy scan attendance — Organizers just need to scan the QR of attendees to mark attendance
- Add Redeemables — Add unlockable content, free phygital items, drinks, snacks, etc., and verify whether attendees have claimed easily through scanning
- Highly Secure — Each QR scanner comes with a secret that expires every 5 seconds for added security.
- Dashboard for creators as a one-access place for their statistics.
It was a great learning experience, and we are now working with AssetMantle to improve the product and deploy it on Mainnet.
What challenges do you most often face at hackathons and how you overcame them?
I cannot pull all-nighters; haha. Though technology-wise, docs have always been an issue in the space. Most projects and chains operate on beta releases and make frequent bug fixes and code changes. The developer docs usually do not get updated at the same time, which ends up with us getting into the code of the particular project to check for changes in function parameters, name, etc.
There is also a lot of froth in the space, which leads to a steep learning curve, and finding resources becomes challenging. However, this is now being solved by a few organizations which are hand-holding developers from Web2 to Web3, especially in India, and I can say without a doubt that Lumos Labs has been one of the front runners in the same by conducting hackathons, and cohorts, providing resource guides and other opportunities to learn and buidl.
Tell us about the projects you are looking forward to working on next.
I look to develop nftix and sorobix forward. I have been intrigued by the challenges in Event Management, especially the issue of grey markets, and I am committed to exploring blockchain-based solutions to address these problems. Additionally, with the recent release of smart contracts on Stellar, I aim to utilize Sorobix to bring more developers to the ecosystem.
How did you balance building your Web3 knowledge and pursuing your education?
I was fortunate to have a college policy that allowed students with a 9+ CGPA to be exempted from attending classes, which proved to be very helpful in managing my Web3 learning alongside my studies. During the COVID-19 pandemic, I was able to fully dedicate my time to Web3 learning, while only attending exams as required. This allowed me to immerse myself in the Web3 space and gain valuable knowledge and experience. Because of the same reasons, I joined Hungama full-time and am building such amazing products today.
What is your most surreal experience so far?
This space has been very rewarding to me at every step except the highs and lows in my portfolio, of course. However, one particular event stands out as the most memorable so far — the FIL Bangalore event during ETH India week. While attending as a participant in over 50 events during the week, I had the opportunity to meet Niki from Filecoin and discuss my journey with IPFS and hackathons. She invited me to be a panelist for a session later that evening, which was attended by over 1,000 Web3 builders.
Speaking about my Web3 journey in front of such a large audience was an incredibly exhilarating experience, surpassing even the excitement of NFT flips or hackathon wins.
What are your other interests?
In addition to my passion for Web3, I also have a keen interest in fitness and have been actively hitting the gym for the past few years. I also enjoy playing Table Tennis, Badminton, and Cricket in my free time. While I used to consider myself quite introverted, I have recently begun to socialize more and find that I enjoy connecting with other developers, builders, and founders. Hearing about their experiences and gaining insights from their mistakes has been invaluable in helping me to learn and improve my own approach to building in the Web3 space.
How has the journey been from being a developer to a Product Lead and Founder?
It has been a fulfilling and exciting one indeed. I have always had the zeal to lead from the front, be it an event, a project I am working on, or even planning a trip with friends. Since childhood, I have had a passion for technology and have enjoyed taking on new challenges and responsibilities.
Taking part in hackathons always helped me learn things quickly. I have been part of multiple startups as an intern from my 1st year, and working directly with the founders helped me understand a lot of people management, and being the lead at ACM gave me that extra boost of mentoring juniors, conducting events, making Open Source projects and a lot more. I have always been a keen observer and quick learner; all these motivated me to go a step higher. Web3, on its own, is lovely in the way it doesn’t have age-based barriers to what you want to do.
This was when I thought I could apply these skills in Hungama; it has been an incredible journey since. Apart from that, Sorobix and NFTIX have also been hackathon products for which I have always had a vision and am now scaling it forward.
These have led me to think more strategically and consider the bigger picture while also being able to manage teams and work with stakeholders.
Where do you see yourself in the next 5 years?
I strongly believe in the saying “Change is the only constant” and have applied it to my career choices so far, whether it was changing companies or roles. My ultimate goal is to become an entrepreneur, create products that will benefit people on a large scale, and achieve financial success. I am a hard worker, always willing to put in extra effort, and driven by capitalist ideals. My focus is on the next six months, as I recognize that the Web3 industry is evolving rapidly, and I need to adapt quickly to stay on top of the game. Five years is a long time, and I understand the need to stay nimble and flexible to achieve my goals in this dynamic industry.
Driven by his will to meet new people, learn new things, and solve complex problems, he has done some commendable work. Rishabh’s story is a glimpse of what hard work and determination can do for you. His innate ability to gel with people and learn new things has made this a truly inspiring story.
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