How do I tell a genuinely good incubator or accelerator from one that just takes equity and gives nothing?
Judge the network, not the brochure. A real program gets you warm intros to investors and customers, has alumni who raised or grew after the batch, and has partners who answer your emails a year later. Red flags: they charge you a fee AND take equity, the mentors are unnamed, no alum will get on a call with you, and the pitch is mostly about their fancy space. Talk to three alumni before you sign anything.
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This one names the predatory pattern precisely: a program whose real business is charging you thousands to build your website with its in-house dev team, while it also holds equity, a straight conflict of interest. It documents founders locked into binding contracts paying over 100,000 dollars, and its core instruction backs our answer: interview past participants (it says roughly 80 percent of them), not just the two the program hand-picks for you.
This is the benchmark to hold any private accelerator against. Under SISFS the government routes money to you THROUGH DPIIT-recognised incubators as a grant of up to 20 lakh (plus up to 50 lakh as debt or convertible debenture), so a vetted incubator can back you without charging a fee. If a program is asking for cash AND equity for less, ask why you shouldn't just apply here to an empanelled incubator instead.
This is your actual question sheet: it tells you to interview program leadership about founder EXITS (not the staff's own startups), to demand named investors who wrote checks to portfolio companies, and it puts a hard number on equity (be wary above 6 to 8 percent, and hunt for hidden fees). It also says the quiet part out loud: run a background check on the mentors before you believe the mentor list.
