Mind Fund has recently participated in a US$124 million funding round for Hedera Hashgraph

Hedera Hashgraph, which aims to become the distributed public ledger alternative to blockchain, today announced a partnership with Hong Kong-based venture capital firm Mind Fund to launch new accelerator programme Helix.

Set to run for 10 weeks in Hong Kong, Helix incubates next-generation distributed ledger technologies (DLT) startups exclusively on the Hedera hashgraph platform.

Due to begin in January 2019, the programme will include funding, mentorship, accommodations, and a US$100,000 funding upon graduation.

Its first batch will be recruited from the Hedera hackathons held in October in Dallas, Singapore, London, Tel Aviv, Sao Paolo, Paris, San Francisco, Bangalore, and Moscow, as well as a conference in Dallas.

After the programme, participating startups will also get access to Global Incubation Stream, a networking initiative by Mind Fund and its Tokyo- and San Francisco-based partner Digital Garage.

“We believe Hedera has the best chance of succeeding in building the enterprise grade public network that will be used by startups and enterprises for years to come. The quality of the team and the technology is unrivaled in this space and we want to help Hedera succeed by fostering the ecosystem with an accelerator,” Mind Fund Partner and Helix CEO Mark Cheng said in a press statement.

Also Read: Hedera Hashgraph claims its tech is superior to blockchain, set to open Singapore office soon

“We think now is the perfect time for accelerators in the crypto space because the days of raising an ICO pre-product are over. It is advantageous for startups to at least have a working proof of concept before they raise institutional rounds and we believe Helix can help with this,” he continued.

In Asia Pacific, spending for DLT-related solutions is estimated to almost double to US$281.69 million in 2018, according to a report by Cognizant.

Existing use cases of the technology includes services such as medical credentialising and financial inclusion enhancement.

Dallas-based Hedera Hashgraph aims to build a technology that is safer, faster, and can work at larger scale than the existing blockchain technology.

The company’s spokesperson informed e27 that it has raised a total of US$124 million with US$20 million coming from its accredited investor crowdsale and the rest coming from institutional investors. Thirty-seven per cent of it are from the Asia Pacific region.

Mind Fund had also participated in the funding round.

In a past interview with e27, Hedera revealed an interest in the Southeast Asian market and mentioned plan to open an office in Singapore.

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Image Credit: Kilyan Sockalingum on Unsplash

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