#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.
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, led by Tak Lee, who brings deep experience investing and building in India and emerging markets. We share the same DNA as Hashed backing founders at the earliest stages, with a thesis that has expanded from onchain infrastructure to the machine economy. We follow a full-stack approach, providing critical value beyond capital to the visionary teams we back.
Onchain is where we started, and it remains central to everything we do - 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 empower 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.
We believe the machine economy is the natural extension of our thesis. Blockchain and AI are converging at the infrastructure layer - verifiable compute, onchain data provenance, and autonomous agent networks are crypto primitives being repurposed for machine intelligence. Our geographic footprint across Korea, Japan, and India places us at the intersection of the hardware, supply chains, and engineering talent that physical AI demands. And India's rapid AI adoption is creating an entirely new market for AI-native enterprise software, built for its own compliance, languages, and distribution patterns. The technology evolves, but the investing instinct does not.
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 is home to the second-largest developer ecosystem in the world and the third-largest web3 founder base globally. The country has moved from software outsourcing hub to a global centre of engineering excellence, now producing founders across web3, AI, and deep tech who are building for both local and global markets.
Africa represents one of the highest-potential frontiers for onchain and AI adoption. With a young, fast-growing population, expanding mobile-first internet access, and financial systems ripe for disruption, founders from Nigeria, Kenya, South Africa, and across the continent are building solutions that leapfrog legacy infrastructure entirely.
The internet is borderless, and innovation knows no geography. Founders and projects from outside our core focus regions, but within our investment thesis, remain firmly on our radar. We actively track builder ecosystems across the Middle East, Southeast Asia, and beyond.