Meet Hatch Web3 Accelerator for Hedera’s seven expert mentors

We’ve made significant progress with the Hatch Web3 Accelerator for Hedera and are now prepared to enter the next thrilling stage.

The excellent partnership between Lumos Labs and the HBAR Foundation is accelerating innovation in the Web3 space through the Hatch Web3 Accelerator for Hedera, inviting Web3 startups to grow at scale with Hedera network services.

After receiving a response of 500+ applications from various startups solving different problems in the fields of DeFi, NFTs, Metaverse, Tokenization, and Sustainability, we’ve arrived at a list of 20 startups that will be entering the month-long boot camp.

The boot camp’s goal is to help companies expand their Web3 knowledge bases and build on Hedera. In addition, they have the chance to interact with Web3 mentors, gain access to practical workshops, and develop significant networks as they advance in their vocations.

In light of these aspects, we have assembled a team of seven experts with the understanding and knowledge to ensure that the qualifying startups have an exceptional accelerator learning experience.

Raghu Mohan, Co-founder, Buidlers Tribe

Raghu Mohan is the quintessential startup person passionate about enabling and supporting innovators with opportunities to grow, learn, and scale. With a background in technology, he has more than ten years of experience working as a marketer for a number of well-known brands. In addition, he was a part of the founding teams of companies like HackerEarth and YourStory, two prominent companies fostering the expansion of the startup and developer communities in India.

For the accelerator, Raghu will be mentoring the startups with an understanding of the nuances in pitching and fundraising the venture capitalists and investors. In addition, his expertise will play a magnificent role in the startups’ growth and how to scale their market reach.

Pareen Lathia, Co-founder, Buidlers Tribe

Pareen is a serial entrepreneur who has built a tech services company, a SaaS product, and two immensely successful hostel ventures. He is a former AVP of Marketing at WazirX. Being an avid crypto trader, Pareen is a keen crypto writer and works as a crypto analyst for various publications. He currently resides in Bengaluru, India. Pareen shall be mentoring startups on marketing and growth.

One of the most crucial operational facets of running a startup is its marketing and growth. Our marketing expert Pareen will focus on insights into the market structure and channels with respect to the business needs and build strategies and execution plans.

Kaavya Prasad, Founder, Lumos Labs

Kaavya Prasad, Founder of Lumos Labs, an innovation management firm, is an early-stage Web3 investor and an evangelist. As an early entrant into the Indian Web3 ecosystem, she has worked on several Indian market-entry initiatives for global blockchain companies in India. She is an LP on significant crypto funds and has personally invested in several key early-stage Web3 projects. An architect by qualification, Kaavya has explored graphic design, product management, and marketing sectors. She is heading Lumos Labs as it engineers its way into a developer-centric Metaverse platform that harnesses global Web3 opportunities into a virtual world.

We cannot overstate the significance of fundraising and investor pitching for early-stage startups. Our founder Kaavya will engage as a mentor for the entrepreneurs in this accelerator and assist them in developing compelling pitches for investors and a significant market reach.

Ishita Srivastava, Ex Research Partner at Woodstock Fund

Ishita is a former research partner and investments analyst at Woodstock Fund; a multi-asset investment fund house focused on investments in the emerging tech space. She graduated from Birla Institute of Technology and Science, Pilani, and is a recipient of the Economic Times CS award. Ishita currently resides in Mumbai, India.

Tokenomics determines the incentives that specify how the token will be distributed and the usefulness of the tokens that impact their demand. Mechanism design is an economic framework for understanding how organizations might achieve optimal results. Ishita will help the startups deep dive into the Mechanism design and token economics for this accelerator.

Rob Allen, HBAR Foundation

Rob is a value-driven entrepreneur, engineer, technologist, startup founder, conservationist, and author. After 30 years in enterprise technology and consultancy in the banking, technology, and military sectors, he now builds and advises sustainability-focused startups looking to use emerging technology to solve real-world problems. As SVP for Ecosystem Acceleration at the HBAR Foundation, Rob oversees the strategy for empowering startups globally to build their businesses on the Hedera Hashgraph distributed ledger technology network.

Being an expert strategist, Rob will be mentoring startups on sustainability and scaling startups on web3. His knowledge will empower startups to gain an understanding of and sustain their strategies for potential growth.

Niko Leontakianakos, HBAR Foundation

Niko Leontakianakos graduated from the University of Queensland, Australia, with a Bachelor of Engineering and started his career in Finance in London. After seven years of working in Banking, he decided to launch his Fintech startup in the tax space in Australia. During this year, he dove into web3 applications in the traditional finance space and decided to move to the HBAR Foundation. Now he manages Ecosystem Acceleration for the Foundation, where he works with ambitious startups looking to build something unique and powerful on Hashgraph.

Niko Leontakianak and Rob Allen will be representing Hedera and mentoring on how to build scalable products using the web3 strategies and structures.

Shantanu Vishwanadha, Developer Relations, Covalent HQ

Shantanu is a Developer evangelist with four years of professional experience running startups, building communities, and creating a technological impact. Shantanu holds great mastery in scaling businesses with his outstanding skills and expertise. In addition, he is an organizer of various technical communities across India and globally. Previously, he has been a co-founder of two web3 startups with an eye for scaling business acumen and now actively helping developer communities by advocating developer products and tools.

Shantanu is a Hedera Champ, connected with Hedera’s developer team. He will handle all the technical sessions and projects building on Hedera. In addition, he can help startups resolve any questions and queries during office hours.

A bright opportunity for startups

This initiative is built to nurture the Web3 startup ecosystem, extending to two cohorts with access to grants worth $150,000 each. We are eager to start bootcamp now that all our mentors are in place. The boot camp is geared to assemble a group of remarkable individuals who will work to develop their projects into full-fledged enterprises that can be established. We are confident that individuals participating will gain a tremendous amount from the event.