How incubators really decide who gets in

NSRCEL's AVP for Idea Stage Entrepreneurship and Mentoring speaks to Nikhil Abhishek about how early founders are evaluated, what signals matter, and why clear thinking beats polished decks

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NCUBATORS have become one of the most influential filters in India’s startup pipeline, yet many young founders approach applications with assumptions that weaken their chances long before the pitch.

To understand how early ideas are judged, what selection panels prioritise, and where most new founders misread the process, we spoke with Gangotri V Naik, AVP for Idea Stage Entrepreneurship and Mentoring at the Nadathur S Raghavan Centre for Entrepreneurial Learning (NSR-CEL), Indian Institute of Management Bangalore (IIMB).

Drawing on years of reviewing early-stage ventures across sectors, she outlines the patterns that consistently separate a promising team from a polished but shallow pitch, and the preparation that makes an applicant worth an incubator’s time.

When student or early-stage founders pitch to NSRCEL for incubation, what are the first three things you look for?

To set context, NSRCEL has a specific programme for student entrepreneurs called the Campus Founders Program, open to current students or recent graduates. Our selectivity is about 7-8% for a cohort, and we incubate about 40-50 student founders annually. The application process is quite comprehensive and multistage. The first thing we look at is the team: structure, role differentiation, past experiences, equity or ownership split (if defined), and mindsets. While the pitch is with the founding team, we also try to understand how the larger team was put together, including advisors or mentors. Second is proof of work. What have they actually done on the ground? Is this just a recent idea, or something they’ve tested and validated over time? Third, we assess whether this is a project or a venture. With so many AI tools available, it is easy to create a pitch deck quickly, but it is also easy to identify who has put in the hard work and understands the market.