  It is presumed that thermal fluctuations present during inflationary epoch
can make inflaton scalar field to interact with other fields resulting in the
existence of a thermal component during the inflationary period. The presence
of this thermal component assists structure formation and reduces reheating
dependence as in the contemporary inflationary paradigm. This is known as warm
inflation. In 1990 J . D. Barrow \cite{25} considered a scenario of inflation
with matter field having a phenomenological equation of state of the type
$p+\rho=\gamma\rho^{\lambda},~\gamma\neq 0$ and $\lambda$ constant. He called
such inflationary scenarios as "graduated inflation". In this work we
reconsider the above equation of state in a scenario of warm inflation. Our aim
would be to investigate and understand whether such matter can also act as a
viable candidate for warm inflation.
