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I'm building Incubateer, a platform that helps startup founders find grants they can…
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Mirror
Mirror
"Objects in the mirror are closer than they appear" yes, they are!! While driving to the market, I saw one of my old…
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Mahesh K posted thisFor the next 41 days, I've given up meat and alcohol. Not for a diet. For a vow. It's a spiritual practice I keep before a pilgrimage. Black clothes, simple food, up before sunrise, the same small routine every single day. I'm a founder building alone. Most days nobody tells me what to do, and nobody notices if I skip something. That freedom is the hardest part of the job. A vow flips it. The rules are fixed before day one. You don't negotiate with yourself at 5 AM. You just get up. I'm only at the start, and one thing is already clear. Discipline isn't a burst of motivation. It's deciding once, and then not reopening the decision every morning. That's most of what building a company alone asks for. Not the big calls. The same small promise, kept on the days nobody is watching. What's one rule you've stopped negotiating with yourself about? #Leadership #Entrepreneurship #Discipline
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Mahesh K shared thisDeadlines get applications finished. KAUST Innovation Ventures doesn't have one. It takes applications all year, for deep tech startups in health, energy, food and water, with AI as an enabler. Seed cheques go up to $500,000, as convertible notes and equity. Companies need to be operating in Saudi Arabia, incorporated there, or willing to relocate. No closing date sounds like an advantage. In practice it's the easiest kind to miss. There's never a week when it becomes urgent, so it sits on a "later" list for a year. If Saudi Arabia is on your map, set the deadline yourself. Pick the date your company will be ready, write it down, and work back from it. When a programme has no deadline, how do you stop it sliding to "later"? #SaudiStartups #DeepTech #MiddleEastStartups
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Mahesh K posted thisTwo founders apply to SPARKS 2.0 with the same MVP. One is in Mohali, one is in Kochi. The one in Mohali starts a step ahead. SPARKS 2.0 from PI-RAHI, the Northern Region S&T Cluster, closes 23 November. Grant support of up to ₹10 lakh, subject to selection and programme terms. Preference goes to entities registered in Himachal Pradesh, Jammu and Kashmir, Chandigarh, Haryana or Punjab, or those exploring market access there. A preference, not a rule. The Kochi founder can still apply. The rest of the bar. TRL 4 or above, which the call defines as at least an MVP. A private limited company, or registered as one within three months. Sectors are agritech and food processing, healthcare and medical devices, clean energy and mobility, waste and circularity, and indigenous technology. If you're outside the north, what would you put in your application to make up that step? #StartupIndia #StartupGrants #AgriTech
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Mahesh K shared thisLast week I deleted 69 real, open grants from Incubateer. They were US federal grants from grants.gov. Nothing wrong with them. But no founder in India or the Middle East can win them, and that's who this is built for. Keeping them only made our number bigger. Since 22 September we've removed 2,443 rows that were dead or useless. The live catalog now holds 8693. The homepage says 8,000+, below the live count on purpose, and that's checked every day. Broken rows are easy to delete. True ones that don't fit are harder, because they make the number look good. Is there something in your product that's still there only because it makes a number look better? #BuildingInPublic #StartupFunding #IndianStartups
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Mahesh K posted thisICMR will fund a health idea with up to ₹1 crore. Its first question is whether anyone in the world has tried it before. The First in the World Challenge 2026 closes 30 November, 5:30 PM. Indian startups, MSMEs and industry can apply, alongside scientists at medical colleges, universities and research labs. There are three stages. Up to ₹1 crore over two years for a proof of concept. Shortlisted projects can move to a prototype, up to ₹4 crore over three years, and then a final product, up to ₹8 crore over four years. The bar is in the name. Vaccines, drugs, diagnostics and interventions that have never been thought of, tested or tried anywhere. The call says incremental improvements won't be considered, and the first step in selection is confirming the idea is a world first. That rules out most health startups, including good ones. A better version of something that already exists is a business. It isn't this grant. If yours qualifies, what's the one line you'd show a reviewer to prove nobody has done it? #HealthTech #ICMR #NonDilutiveFunding
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Mahesh K shared this36.8% fewer funding rounds in India this year. The money went up anyway. Tracxn data, reported by ET Entrepreneur: Indian tech startups raised $10.94 billion between 1 January and 15 October 2026, across 1,253 rounds. Same period last year, $10.21 billion across 1,982 rounds. By my maths, the average round grew from about $5.2 million to $8.7 million. The Middle East shows the same shape. MAGNiTT's Q3 update puts MENA venture funding for the first nine months down 7%, and deal count down 33%. The UAE and Saudi Arabia took 89% of the money. Early-stage deals made up 82% of activity, their lowest share in a decade. Two regions, one message. Fewer cheques, bigger cheques, written to companies that already look safe. If you're pre-seed, that isn't a reason to stop. It's a reason to change the order. Grants, state schemes and challenge prizes don't care how many rounds closed last quarter. They care whether you fit the rules. ET notes that seed data is often reported late, so the early-stage drop may be overstated. Even so, I'd plan as if it isn't. Where are you looking first for your next ₹10 lakh? #StartupFunding #IndianStartups #MiddleEastStartups
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Mahesh K shared this100+ hours of one-to-one coaching and a stage at the WISE Summit in Doha. The programme page doesn't promise a cheque. The WISE EdTech Accelerator 2026-27 from Qatar Foundation closes 31 October. It's open to edtech founders in any country, across K12, higher education and professional development. It's for a specific kind of company. For-profit only. Past MVP, with traction and sales you can show. Seed to pre-series A, with less than $500,000 raised. And it prefers co-founder teams over solo founders. There are two tracks. The Local Track is for entering the Qatari market, and comes with access to local funding through partners like QSTP and QRDI. The International Track is for scaling globally. If you match that profile, the stage and the network can be worth more than a cash grant. If you're a solo founder, pre-revenue, this cycle is a long shot. Better to know that tonight than after a weekend on the form. Edtech founders, which matters more to you at this stage, cash or the room? #EdTech #Qatar #MiddleEastStartups
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Mahesh K shared thisMy daughter is one. Yesterday she climbed the steps from our ground floor to the first floor. One step. Then the next one. I held her hand and we went at her speed. At the top she turned around, looked all the way down, and started giggling. Loud. Calling out to her mom like she'd just climbed a mountain. She never once looked at the top on the way up. Only at the step in front of her. I'm building something on my own, and I spend far too much time looking at the top. The big number. The day it all works. She's reminding me of what I keep forgetting. One step at a time. Hold a hand on the hard ones. And when you get somewhere, turn around and laugh about how far you came. Proud dad. What's one step you climbed this year that you never stopped to look back at? #Fatherhood #FounderLife
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Mahesh K shared thisMy daughter is one. Yesterday she climbed the steps from our ground floor to the first floor. One step. Then the next one. I held her hand and we went at her speed. At the top she turned around, looked all the way down, and started giggling. Loud. Calling out to her mom like she'd just climbed a mountain. She never once looked at the top on the way up. Only at the step in front of her. I'm building something on my own, and I spend far too much time looking at the top. The big number. The day it all works. She's reminding me of what I keep forgetting. One step at a time. Hold a hand on the hard ones. And when you get somewhere, turn around and laugh about how far you came. Proud dad. What's one step you climbed this year that you never stopped to look back at? #Fatherhood #FounderLife
Mahesh K replied to a comment
19h
Razeen Shaheed Yes, preparing is fine if the ask is specific. "Send this email to X, because Y" works. "Approve 14 actions" doesn't, because people stop reading by the third one. I'd also want to see why it chose that action, and one tap to undo.
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Mahesh K liked thisMahesh K liked thisOne of the easiest ways to convince yourself a startup will work is to imagine it already working. I’ve done this more times than I’d like to admit. Imagine a marketplace with 1,000 agents and 500 housing societies. The agents get customers. The societies get services- everyone wins, it’s a great business. Now remove 999 agents and 500 societies. Why would that one remaining agent use your product? This is where a surprising number of startup ideas fall apart. We spend so much time thinking about how valuable our business will be when it’s big that we start treating that future value as something that exists today. And whenever someone questions the value of what we’re building, we explain what it will eventually become. But that’s circular reasoning, you are assuming the very thing you’re trying to achieve. Some businesses genuinely become more valuable with scale. But even those businesses need a reason for the first few customers to show up. I’ve started asking myself a different question when evaluating ideas. If this product never got any bigger than its tiniest useful version, would someone still want it? Because if the answer is no, scale isn’t your growth strategy, it’s your assumption.
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