How eligibility scoring works

The three verdicts

Incubateer reduces a grant's fit to one of three plain verdicts so you can scan quickly:

• Strong match. Your profile lines up well across the dimensions a grant cares about. You meet the hard requirements and fit the intent. These deserve your time first.
• Worth a look. A reasonable fit with one or two gaps. Maybe your stage is slightly early, or one requirement is borderline. Open it, read the detail, and decide if the gap is closeable.
• Long shot. A weaker fit. You may miss a hard requirement or sit far from the grant's intent. You can still apply, but go in clear-eyed about the odds.

What feeds the score

The verdict is built from how your startup profile compares to each grant's criteria. The main dimensions are:

• Stage. Many grants only fund a specific stage, from idea to early revenue. A grant for proof-of-concept work is a poor fit if you are already scaling, and the reverse is true too.
• Sector. Some schemes only fund certain industries. A biotech grant will not score well for a pure SaaS product.
• State. State schemes depend on where you are registered and operating. Central schemes are broader, but location still matters.
• Revenue. Several grants cap or floor revenue, or are aimed at pre-revenue startups specifically.
• Team. Founder and team composition can matter, especially for schemes with specific founder criteria.
• Registration. Entity type and recognition (for example a private limited company, an LLP, or DPIIT recognition) are hard gates on many grants.

Why the score is honest, not inflated

It would be easy to mark everything a strong match so the app feels encouraging. We do not do that. An inflated score wastes the one thing founders cannot get back: time. Grant applications take real hours, and a flattering verdict that sends you toward a grant you cannot win is worse than no verdict at all.

So when something is a long shot, Incubateer says so. The tagline is "Find the grants you'll actually win," and an honest score is how we keep that promise. A shorter list of real matches beats a long list of false hope.

How to improve your matches

The single biggest lever is a complete, accurate profile. Scoring can only judge what you have told it.

1. Fill every onboarding field. Blanks make the score guess, and guesses are conservative. A complete profile produces sharper verdicts.
2. Keep it current. When your stage, revenue, registration, or team changes, update your profile. New milestones can move grants from worth a look to strong match.
3. Get registered. If a class of grants requires a specific entity type or DPIIT recognition and you do not have it, that is often the gate keeping you at long shot. Closing it unlocks a whole set of grants.
4. Re-check after switching startups. Each startup is scored on its own profile, so complete each one separately.

You edit all of this from your profile, reachable through the startup switcher. The grants feed re-scores as soon as your profile changes.