Winning Startups Announced for NEAR’s First-Ever Accelerator in India

• ArGo Protocol, MotoDB, and MooPay, the top three startups involved in the NEAR Blockchain Accelerator Program, will receive grant funding, networking opportunities and go-to-market support.
• NEAR announces additional grants and support for runners up as part of broader ecosystem development.
• Woodstock Fund, Fracton Ventures, and Buidlers Tribe to provide additional support to these teams to continue their growth and help them scale further.

NEAR Protocol, a super fast and secure open-source, developer-friendly, carbon neutral blockchain, today announced ArGo Protocol, MotoDB and MooPay as the winners of the three-month NEAR Blockchain Accelerator program. Prizes included a share of $100K along with support services aimed at strengthening the developer ecosystem in India.

Over 175 developers and innovators from across India participated in the virtual event. Finalists also participated in a four-week NEAR Blockchain Accelerator Bootcamp which consisted of a mentorship program and one-on-one sessions to help navigate the regulatory environment.

Industry mentors included Tanvi Ratna, Pareen Lathia, Raghu Mohan, Didier Pironi, Anish Mohammed, Jason Shah and other leaders involved in entrepreneurship, product development, and marketing. Teams were also invited to join NEAR’s Certified Developer Program to better understand and leverage the NEAR Protocol.

"The positive response received throughout the NEAR Blockchain Accelerator program has been a testimony to the spirit of innovation in the Indian developer pool. Through the course of this three-month-long program, we had the opportunity to support and mentor some of the brightest minds in India,” said Illia Polosukhin, Co-founder, NEAR Protocol.

"With India being a globally recognized technology hub today, the participants of the accelerator presented novel blockchain concepts that we at the NEAR Protocol were glad to support. Our entry into the Indian market has been filled with unique ideas and Lumos Labs has been instrumental in augmenting the outreach," he added.

On the final Demo Day of the NEAR Blockchain Accelerator, six chosen finalists -- ArGo Protocol, Genebloc Private Limited, MooPay, Motodb, Pixelate, and PredictRAM--pitched their futuristic NEAR blockchain-based solutions to a panel of expert judges. Of those six, three were announced as the winners:

1. ArGo Protocol, a decentralized hosting and storage protocol for enterprises and developers.
2. MotoDB, a decentralized blockchain and DApp focussed on the automobile space.
3. MooPay, a blockchain-based payment and business solution for commerce and Woodstock Fund.

The keynote session, led by NEAR Co-founder Illia Polosukhin and Robert Yan, NEAR’s Head of Developer Relations in Asia, explored The State of Web 3.0 Startups in India with Angel Investor and Serial Entrepreneur Ajeet Khurana, Policy 4.0 CEO Tanvi Ratna, and Raghu Mohan, CEO and cofounder of Lumos Labs.

The NEAR Blockchain Accelerator was launched in partnership with Lumos Labs, an innovation management firm, Woodstock Fund, a DLT- focussed multi-asset investment fund, Fracton Ventures, a prominent Web3.0 Japanese investment and development platform, and Buidlers Tribe, an incubator dedicated to driving the blockchain-based startup innovation in India.

Furthermore, Woodstock Fund announced it will review and reward solutions with an additional $100K pool as part of its commitment to NEAR ecosystem development.

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