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Founder Feed

Unfiltered startup learnings, verified telemetry breakthroughs, grant notifications, and case studies from SIES founders and leaders.

Sahil Vaidya•Technology Agriculture Creater

2 hours ago • 3 min read

Traction Story

How we took a hardware IoT node from SIES electronics lab into 12 farms in Nashik

When we started in the SIES GST lab, everyone warned us hardware was too expensive for college students. By stripping off non-essential displays and using GSM-direct telemetry with MQTT, we reduced bill of materials from ₹8,400 to ₹1,950 per unit. Farmers didn't need a fancy dashboard—they wanted a Marathi audio message at 6 AM telling them whether their soil required irrigation today.

#AgriTech#Hardware#Bootstrapping#Frugal Innovation

Dr. Atul Kemkar•SIES Incubation Centre

5 hours ago • 2 min read

Grant Alert

The 3 biggest mistakes student founders make when applying for NIDHI-PRAYAS

Every year we review 50+ applications for DST grants. 1) Too much theoretical background, 0 breakdown of prototype milestone BOM. 2) No customer discovery interviews. 3) Not registering DPIIT certificate before submitting. If you fix these three, your probability of clearing the evaluation committee jumps by 70%.

#Grants#DST#Prototyping#Evaluation

Karan Shetty•Claravest

1 day ago • 4 min read

Lesson

Why collegiate distribution is the highest leverage hack for fintech founders

Instead of running Instagram ads with ₹450 CAC, we partnered with college cultural festivals and finance clubs across Navi Mumbai. We hosted 20-minute financial literacy teardowns and offered instant paperless onboarding. Our CAC dropped to ₹32 per verified user with a 74% D-30 retention.

#FinTech#Zero-CAC#Growth Hacking#Student Ecosystem

Vikram Rao•Matrix Growth Labs

2 days ago • 5 min read

Playbook

The Zero-to-One Term Sheet Decoder for First-Time Indian Founders

Do not give away 25% of your equity in your pre-seed round. Keep dilution between 10% to 15%. Watch out for Participating Preference Shares, aggressive liquidation multiples, and non-standard board rights. A clean cap table at inception is worth more than a slightly higher vanity valuation.

#Fundraising#Term Sheets#Cap Table#Venture Capital