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Why a Crypto Investor Turned Entrepreneur Made Into Entrepreneur's 35U35 List His interest in Bitcoin introduced him to the blockchain, the underlying technology behind the crypto asset

By Vanita D'souza

Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.

You're reading Entrepreneur India, an international franchise of Entrepreneur Media.

Entrepreneur India

Blenders Pride Reserve Collection presents Entrepreneur's 35U35 list included some path-breaking names from the field of entrepreneurship and Elemential's co-founder Raunaq Vaisoha made it to the list for enabling aspiring entrepreneurs to have an online presence.

Why Raunaq Vaisoha?

As a young boy, Raunaq Vaisoha was always fascinated with financial markets. In fact, his mentor was his grandfather who taught him the value of identifying rare opportunities early and working with the right people to make great things happen. While he was still in school, this outlook introduced him to Bitcoin and it is only a matter of time that Vaisoha started trading in the cryptocurrency.

This exercise introduced him to blockchain, the underlying technology of bitcoin.

He says, "After understanding it, I was encapsulated by the opportunity it could create. A few hackathons and watching people attempt to build applications around 2015, my friends and I realized that this space needed enablement to move to the next level of scale. This led us to build a middle-ware centred around operations and scaling blockchain."

In 2016, Vaisoha along with Anil Dukkipatty, Sahil Kathpal started Elemential Labs. The blockchain powered startup is funded by seed investors like Matrix Partners, Hinduja Group, DCG, Lightspeed Venture Partners and several angel investors.

Blockchain – The Hot Spot

Considering the hype around blockchain, Elemential has witnessed its own share of highs and lows.

"After a hype cycle, there's always a trough which one has to weather before something really big can happen. The blockchain industry has certainly entered this trough early, my advice to everyone in the space is to stay strong, your time will come; big value takes time and persistence," he added.

What makes the startup standout amongst its peers is it middle-ware – Hadron, which has been used in some of the highest-scale environments in the world.

Apart from various large banks, capital market intermediaries and regulators, Elemential Labs' largest client is the National Stock Exchange.

Discussing the project with Entrepreneur India, Vaisoha shares, "They have leveraged us for mission-critical use-cases from KYC to reconciliation. We are proud to have worked closely with an organization of great national importance to bring in the future."

Apart from adding several large customers onboard, Elemential grew from a 3-person team to a 15-person team in a matter of a year. For 2019, the entrepreneur only hopes to continue to power its customers to do great things with distributed ledger technology.

Vanita D'souza

Former Senior Correspondent, Entrepreneur India

I am a Mumbai-based journalist and have worked with media companies like The Dollar Business Magazine, Business Standard, etc.While on the other side, I am an avid reader who is a travel freak and has accepted foodism as my religion.

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