Build for web3 in India at Graviton Accelerator - Here’s why!

Join a 16-week intense accelerator with a $50K initial investment and hands-on mentorship from leading web3 founders, VCs, evangelists, strategists, and growth mentors.

The brickwork for India’s long-term web3 evolution is being laid right now. While economists predict the golden age of web3 (up to a $1.1T contribution to national GDP) to be nearly a decade away, the groundwork that’s happening today will go a long way in shaping decisive market dynamics.

In 2021, venture capitalists worldwide invested over $30Bn into web3 products, while India absorbed only about $650Mn. However, in recent years, entrepreneurs and developers have become increasingly interested in building for web3. The onset of numerous hackathons, meetups, and hyper-local web3 communities in India is also a solid indicator of eyeballs rolling towards the subcontinent for a steady increase in pace as far as web3 is concerned.

India has always been on the frontline of enabling scale in any new wave of technological disruption. It happened during the expansion of the world wide web, and contributed to creating a plethora of new jobs as Indian operators started outsourcing information technology, software development, and services.

The good news is that Indian buildooors have already made an indelible mark on the global web3 map. Networks such as Polygon have demonstrated pathbreaking growth, and the international techno-capital consortium is ripe with ambitions of teaming up with, and enabling an increasing number of Indian founders to follow suit.

Putting the focus where it belongs

Globally, brands with formidable market caps are jumping on the bandwagon to leverage web3 technologies - this list includes the likes of Nike, Disney, Meta Platforms, and yes, even L’oréal Paris!

While this is a good sign for aspiring Indian web3 founders, the problem of accessibility still begs to be tackled. Simply put, it’s going to be very hard for a potentially disruptive web3 idea from the Indian grassroots to find a worldwide audience and generate the kind of buzz necessary to qualify for a spot at one of these global outposts.

Despite global interest in web3 products, there is a gap in the acceleration of startups from India 1/ 2/ 3.

This a problem that’s unique to the web3 space.

For traditional internet-cos, the Indian industry has perfect solutions in place for startups of almost every stage and scale. Be it the Indian Angel Network or some of the more prominent web2 accelerators and incubators, products that deliver reasonable proof of concept have a multitude of pathways open to them, even if they’re being built out of India 2 or India 3.

The hearts and minds behind Graviton saw this as an actionable gap. With more than five years of incubating and cultivating web3 products for the global market, the team decided to create a program that can successfully cater to the unique needs of web3-first founders in India.

Several blockchain platforms, products, and VCs we had worked with in the past, expressed an active interest in making this happen.

We spoke to multiple Indian web3 founders at various stages of their journey to better understand some critical areas where they may require institutional-grade assistance.

Through their responses, we discovered that while most founders have a rock-solid grasp on the underlying tech protocols powering their business, there is a vast knowledge gap that exists in terms of:

• The legal aspects of forming a business - incorporation, compliance, balance sheet planning, etc
• Talent management - Starting from finding co-founders and core team members to building an organization with a productive hierarchy
• Business modeling - Drafting a growth-focused plan that aligns product evolution with business goals
• Experimenting to find the right product-market fit (PMF)
• Integrating design thinking into both product and business; creating intuitive user interfaces that drive widespread adoption & eventually, user acquisition
• Web3-first foundational principles such as liquidity bootstrapping, market making, decentralized governance, and tokenomics
• Growth Marketing - Implementing the right product-led growth strategy to help with sales, marketing, user acquisition, and scalable business development opportunities
• Fundraising - Arriving at the correct valuation for a good product, identifying runway requirements with precision, pitching yourself against the market, and asking for the right amount

We realized that early-stage founders need more than a robust playbook or online guides to overcome these challenges.Many startups that are building for the decentralized web now stand to benefit immensely through the proper guidance, coming straight from the horse’s mouth - web3 founders and operators who have been through the journey themselves.

The next steps involved bringing VCs, Blockchains, web3 platforms, founders, and evangelists together under one umbrella to deliver a holistic program.

That’s how the Graviton Web3 Accelerator was born.

The Spring Cohort - $50K initial investment + 16 weeks of accelerated growth

Our first cohort will run in Spring 2023 (From February through June 2023). Startups accepted into the program will receive $50,000 in initial funding and access to a thriving ecosystem of VCs, web3 founders, blockchains, platforms, and service providers.

Additionally, these teams will gain foundational learning, split into four modules:

1. Business essentials,
2. Web3-first principles,
3. Growth marketing, and
4. Fundraising.

Alongside core business concepts, startups will also be able to solve practical problems pertaining to their products with the help of global mentors.

On Demo Day, the graduating cohort will have a chance to pitch their respective finished products, including a recap and roadmap outlining their high growth points during the cohort, to an elite selection of global VCs.

Before you apply…

The program is designed to help early-stage founders solve practical problems they commonly face when finding product market fit, building a core team, or raising capital.We are chain agnostic and committed to fostering web3 growth in India.

If you're building for web3 out of India, we're committed to making it happen for you. Apply now!

Application deadline: Jan 25, 2023

Spring cohort: Feb - Jun 2023

Demo day: Jun 2023 (last week)