Our Roots
Hashed
#Hashed, is Asia’s leading blockchain-focused firm, founded in 2017 by serial entrepreneurs and engineers. The Hashed portfolio of investments includes over 250 web3 startups globally, and with its teams based in Seoul, Silicon Valley, and Singapore. Hashed saw the unique potential for blockchain to reshape society and systems through the fabric of the internet by empowering individuals & institutions with decentralized, permissionless, programmable and open-source technology.
"Our deep-rooted relationship with Hashed, their wealth of experience and invaluable network provides us a steady anchor to navigate this ecosystem at all times."
As a closely integrated unit of Hashed paired with our formidable talent & ecosystem base in India, we are equipped with a unique strategic advantage enabling us to offer unparalleled access, expertise and experience to our stakeholders. We create a powerful multiplier effect through our relationship with Hashed - one of the pioneering investment firms in the blockchain space and a gateway to the South Korean and broader Asian web3 markets, and through our focus on India - Indian founder focused investments and strategic initiatives to bridge the global and India native web3 ecosystems.
Our Thesis
Hashed was an early adopter of the decentralization thesis
Hashed's mission is to unlock and accelerate the mainstream adoption of
blockchain by holistically enabling and supporting each generation of blockchain
entrepreneurs and innovators worldwide. To support this mission, Hashed is not
merely a capital allocator; it operates as researchers and contributors to the
onchain infrastructure and economy, by leveraging it’s platform and network of
projects and people to drive this transformation globally. As blockchain
technology matured and became more secure and scalable, Hashed envisioned that a
key frontier to unlock onchain innovation and adoption - with outsized &
transformative potential - is emerging markets, particularly India.
Hashed Emergent was established in 2021 as the realization of this shared vision
and partnership between Hashed and Tak Lee, who brings his extensive experience
in investing and building in India to lead Hashed Emergent. We share the same
DNA as Hashed, with a thesis focused on enabling and backing builders
originating from India and emerging markets at the earliest stages, building the
next generation of onchain companies and protocols. We similarly follow a
full-stack approach in our organizational structure and operations, providing
crucial value beyond capital to tilt the odds in favour of the visionary teams
we back.
Web 3
We believe web3 and the shift to onchain represents the natural evolution toward the next era of the internet - fundamentally reshaped with flavours of decentralized, permissionless, and open-source blockchain technology. In the web2 paradigm, platforms are created, owned and controlled by centralized companies, that relies on an intermediated trust model to exist and function. In contrast, blockchains function as trust-machines that empowers users to interact directly with each other and with onchain protocols without intermediaries, while granting them indisputable and unforfeitable powers to create, own and control their identities, accounts and assets. We believe this will have a monumental impact on the internet as a whole, with particularly transformative effects on the finance, entertainment and social sectors, as summarized below and in detail in our blog.
Finance
Entertainment
Social
Service & Infra
Others
Finance
Web3 as implemented in the finance sector, commonly referred to as ‘DeFi’ applications unleash the concept of ‘money lego blocks’. This will democratize access to create and trade a limitless array of composable digital financial products for any use-case imaginable, while by-passing traditional financial institutions and outdated infrastructure.
Entertainment
Web3 as implemented in the entertainment sector, referred to as ‘GameFi’ applications in the context of video games, redefines the relationship between creators and consumers. This will recalibrate the strategies employed for engagement, retention and monetization in games via asset ownership and token-based incentives.
Social
Web3 as implemented in the social sector, referred to as ‘SocialFi’ applications, introduces open social identity graphs and token-based systems for access and ownership. This will lay the foundation for creating and coordinating internet-native communities, companies and potentially even self-sovereign network-based states.
Service & Infra
Web3 infrastructure and services encompasses the blockchain’s base layer, scaling solutions, middleware and developer tools designed to address challenges faced by onchain developers or end-users. This critical part of the broader software architecture is developed using blockchain tech or in combination with other software to deliver novel solutions, paving the way for broader adoption and seamless onchain experiences.
Others
Web3 is now its nascent phase and is ripe for limitless possibilities of transformation across the entire startup landscape. As this technology evolves, it promises to unlock new business models and discover new methods to operate, scale and interact with users.
Emerging Markets
We focus on identifying founders from India and emerging markets like Lagos. These regions, with their rapidly growing populations, deep talent pools, tech-savvy user bases and expanding median income, are positioned for extraordinary growth in web3 developer & user adoption. Founders from these markets have the potential to leapfrog their counterparts in developed economies by harnessing the unique opportunities that blockchain technology offers.
India
Africa
Middle East
Southeast Asia
Others
India
India has evolved from being a 'software outsourcing' center to a global hub of 'software excellence'. We believe founders originating from India, with their inherent ‘jugaad’ DNA, will emerge as leading innovators in web3, just as they have in web2. Our HQ is in Bangalore, the hot-spot of web3 of India, for this very reason.
Africa
Certain African countries are embracing blockchain to overcome primitive financial system complex and tackle cross-border payment challenges. With web3, these founders have the potential to revolutionize these crucial systems from the ground-up.
Middle East
Dubai and Abu Dhabi are established financial hubs in Asia and now, an emerging global hubs for the web3 ecosystem as well. A thriving and global ecosystem of founders & funds are establishing themselves here to build their foundations and tap into the Middle East region.
Southeast Asia
South East Asian countries have amongst the highest rates of web3 adoption and usage in the world. The people of these countries intuitively understand the value proposition of emerging technologies such as web3, and have the practical means of operating and building up the ecosystem across the region as well.
Others
The Internet and web3 in and of itself, is a borderless phenomenon and innovation knows no geographic limits. Founders and projects from outside our core focus regions, but within our core investment thesis, also remain on our radar.
Web 3
We believe web3 and the shift to onchain represents the natural evolution toward the next era of the internet - fundamentally reshaped with flavours of decentralized, permissionless, and open-source blockchain technology. In the web2 paradigm, platforms are created, owned and controlled by centralized companies, that relies on an intermediated trust model to exist and function. In contrast, blockchains function as trust-machines that empowers users to interact directly with each other and with onchain protocols without intermediaries, while granting them indisputable and unforfeitable powers to create, own and control their identities, accounts and assets. We believe this will have a monumental impact on the internet as a whole, with particularly transformative effects on the finance, entertainment and social sectors, as summarized below and in detail in our blog.
Finance
Web3 as implemented in the finance sector, commonly referred to as ‘DeFi’ applications unleash the concept of ‘money lego blocks’. This will democratize access to create and trade a limitless array of composable digital financial products for any use-case imaginable, while by-passing traditional financial institutions and outdated infrastructure.
Entertainment
Creators and consumers on entertainment platforms can now utilize digital assets to open up news ways to drive engagement and value among each other without intermediaries.
Social
Web3 as implemented in the social sector, referred to as ‘SocialFi’ applications, introduces open social identity graphs and token-based systems for access and ownership. This will lay the foundation for creating and coordinating internet-native communities, companies and potentially even self-sovereign network-based states.
Service & Infra
Web3 infrastructure and services encompasses the blockchain’s base layer, scaling solutions, middleware and developer tools designed to address challenges faced by onchain developers or end-users. This critical part of the broader software architecture is developed using blockchain tech or in combination with other software to deliver novel solutions, paving the way for broader adoption and seamless onchain experiences.
Others
Web3 is now its nascent phase and is ripe for limitless possibilities of transformation across the entire startup landscape. As this technology evolves, it promises to unlock new business models and discover new methods to operate, scale and interact with users.
Emerging Markets
We focus on identifying founders from India and emerging markets like Lagos. These regions, with their rapidly growing populations, deep talent pools, tech-savvy user bases and expanding median income, are positioned for extraordinary growth in web3 developer & user adoption. Founders from these markets have the potential to leapfrog their counterparts in developed economies by harnessing the unique opportunities that blockchain technology offers.
India
India has evolved from being a 'software outsourcing' center to a global hub of 'software excellence'. We believe founders originating from India, with their inherent ‘jugaad’ DNA, will emerge as leading innovators in web3, just as they have in web2. Our HQ is in Bangalore, the hot-spot of web3 of India, for this very reason.
Africa
Certain African countries are embracing blockchain to overcome primitive financial system complex and tackle cross-border payment challenges. With web3, these founders have the potential to revolutionize these crucial systems from the ground-up.
Middle East
Dubai and Abu Dhabi are established financial hubs in Asia and now, an emerging global hubs for the web3 ecosystem as well. A thriving and global ecosystem of founders & funds are establishing themselves here to build their foundations and tap into the Middle East region.
Southeast Asia
South East Asian countries have amongst the highest rates of web3 adoption and usage in the world. The people of these countries intuitively understand the value proposition of emerging technologies such as web3, and have the practical means of operating and building up the ecosystem across the region as well.
Others
The Internet and web3 in and of itself, is a borderless phenomenon and innovation knows no geographic limits. Founders and projects from outside our core focus regions, but within our core investment thesis, also remain on our radar.
Our Mission
Identify visionary founders from emerging markets, provide full-stack support to fuel their success and expand the native web3 ecosystem to the global stage.
Our northstar mission is to identify and capitalize visionary teams from emerging
markets who are playing the long-game. We provide full-stack mission-critical
resources with our purpose-built team to fuel their success whether it’s in
fundraising, research, talent, growth, intelligence, legal, marketing, tokenomics
and community support.
Our broader goal is to grow the native web3 ecosystem in these markets through our
strategic and long-term community & ecosystem initiatives This
includes events,
education and experiences to broaden the web3 base such as India Blockchain Week
Conference, Protostars accelerator, Text to Code workshops, HODL legal
platform and many more.