Meet the three blockchain startups that Aeternity Starfleet has invested in

The Starfleet India Accelerator, part of the Aeternity Starfleet programme, has picked up three Indian blockchain startups(Drife, Pontis and Hypersign by Hypermine), and is providing seed funding for their projects from AE Ventures, CV Labs, and Woodstock funds.

Aeternity Starfleet is a global accelerator programme that has made investments totalling $2.1 million in over 15 startups globally.

The Starfleet India Accelerator was the inaugural volume of the Starfleet Global Accelerator Programme Series in India by AE Ventures, the investment arm of the æternity blockchain.

“The Indian blockchain space has seen immense development in recent months with multiple initiatives taken by the government and corporates alike. We are proud to provide a catalyst with Starfleet India, wherein our selected startups, with their disruptive ideas, have demonstrated impressive progress over the course of this acceleration programme,” said Nikola Stojanow, CEO of AE Ventures and CBO of æternity.

According to a report by 6Wresearch, India's blockchain technology market is projected to grow at a CAGR of 58 percent during 2018-24. This opens up umpteen opportunities for Indian startups to explore, adopt, and implement blockchain technology.

The Starfleet India accelerator programme received a good response from Indian startups, with over 176 registrations. The startups that qualified for Starfleet India Accelerator were chosen based on their ability to build great products that solve real-world problems and ones that were market-ready.

The Starfleet India Winners are:

Hypersign by Hypermine

Hypermine is a Bengaluru-based startup that provides a decentralised identity management solution enabled with a single-sign-on. It uses blockchain or distributed ledgers and machine learning as the underlying technology to build digital economies with trust and transparency.

Hypermine’s prime product is Hypersign, a seamless, all-in-one authentication and wallet solution. It is a simple-to-use authentication solution that is transparent and stores user data in a manner that it is only accessible to the owner. It helps companies to improve user experience, which drastically aids them to increase users.

Based on Public Key Cryptography, Hypersign enables companies to rapidly deploy password-less authentication and provide frictionless UX to their users. The solution can be checked by anyone at any time, making it suitable for dAPPS.

Hypermine was founded by Irfan Khan, a serial entrepreneur with over 15 years of experience. He has been working with the Hypermine team for over two years to build digital economies with trust and transparency.

Drife

Set to disrupt the ride-hailing industry, Drife is building taxi 3.0 with blockchain technology. The Bengaluru-based startupaims to empowerboth, the driver and the ridercommunity. It was developed with the intention of solving current concerns in the drivers’ community, alongside enhancing the quality of rides for customers.

Drife creates an organic system for the ride-hailing industry to thrive well on the internet. The platform involves a new economic model and aims to incentivise all value creators equally.

Drife was founded by Co-founders  Firdosh Sheikh, CEO and Surya Ranjith, CFO. Firdosh graduated from the Institute of Chartered Accountancy of India. Surya has over three years of industry experience in hedge fund management projects. Both have experience working in the capital markets industry.

Pontis

Pontis is a DeFi solution for centralised exchanges built by a two-member team based out of Bengaluru. Pontis aggregates the best tools in DeFi and integrates them with exchanges, providing a single gateway. This will help users engage with a variety of desi products and services, comparing their rates and switching between them.

Users can earn passive interest on crypto holdings, lend, borrow or stake powerful tools to DeFi. Pontis is built as a cross-platform plug-n-play model that is a B2B product for enterprises.

Pontis was co-founded by Hemanth Kumar K V, CEO, and Nitin Goyal, CTO. Hemanth Kumar KV has over 14 years of experience in E2E IT delivery and product leadership sectors. He was the CIO of Unocoin, a cryptocurrency wallet and exchange based out of India.

Nitin Goyal has over 20 years of experience. Prior to this collaboration with Pontis, Nitin and Hemanth worked together to set up Mints, a technology platform which is a synergy of blockchain and AI to fill the gaps in the conventional rewards programmes.