Private Equity Firm Floats $250M for Developers Building on Cardano and Polkadot

Crypto-facing investment fund FD7 Ventures has announced plans to open an Indian office to cater to developers working on blockchain projects Cardano and Polkadot.

FD7 Seeks To Tap Into India’s Hot Engineering Talents

The office which will be based in Bangalore- India’s engineering hotbed- will share close proximity with the Asian nation’s premier engineering institution Indian Institute of Technology (IIT). 

The Fund is specifically targeted at development teams specializing in the Cardano and Polkadot niche. The Bangalore office will be managed by its Indian partner Neeraj Singh.

From the onset, $5 million will be shared across 50 development projects every year, with thirty percent channeled towards the Cardano and Polkadot ecosystems. 

Projects that scale to the next level through their growth metrics, will receive a further $20 million on top of the initial investment.

Prakash Chand, Global Managing Director at FD7 Ventures, commented on the reasons why the Dubai-based company chose India as a likely destination for a major blockchain investment despite the government looking into outlawing crypto use in the local economy.

To him, IIT is an elite institution where notable engineering talents are produced. Situating their office close as possible to the engineering institution is a major advantage. Chand’s claims are not exactly misplaced. 

Sundar Pichai, CEO of Alphabet Inc and Google is an alumnus of the university. Other notable alumni include Vinod Kholsa, co-founder of Sun Microsystems, Prem Watsa, founder of Fairfax Financial Holdings and Nikesh Arora, former president of SoftBank. These men have moved on from developing India to make an impact in their respective fields.

FD7 also announced that it is looking into the fans-based non-fungible tokens (NFTs) industry and will be exploring investment opportunities in the niche to further strengthen its DOT and ADA holdings. This move will see them collaborate with top Bollywood talents and veterans and cricket players.

FD7 Moves Beyond BTC Holdings

Chand has previously featured in a news release where he commented that Bitcoin was only topping the crypto charts because it was first to market. 

To him, the largest cryptocurrency by market valuation was useless and redundant. He feels that Cardano, Polkadot, and Ethereum are more valuable as they represent the new face of the internet and Web 3.0.

This take on BTC subsequently saw the $1 billion global crypto investment firm moving $750 million out of its BTC holdings. The company said it will fully abandon its BTC holdings in the next 30 days and sees altcoins as a more viable and future-proof investment.

Prakash Chand who founded Ask The Doctor- an online medical service provider with 18,000 doctors on staff- also pointed out that Cardano, Ethereum and Polkadot will usurp the most valuable digital asset tag from Bitcoin in the next couple of years.