Any suggestions for other alternatives that might accept me? I’m running an e-commerce marketplace

Regardless of your political preferences, letting someone like Sonam Wangchuk die and protecting a minister with students' blood on his hands, all to protect a fragile ego of a party . It's not time to be neutral, shame on you. I am calling r/Nagpur for action. We have time. Baad Mein legend ka story lagane ke alawa koi option nahi rahega

I want to build a something to help other startups get funded easily.

Every startup founder needs some initial money . They look for pre-seeding, but I genuinely feel pre-seed right now is not meant for providing funds to ideas. In India, it's very limited. If you want funding for a really innovative product, you deliberately have to prove massive traction or market demand first , otherwise, you have to invest your own cash. Because of this, many founders just leave it. I’ve seen so many founders who don’t have jobs but want to build something amazing.

To support all of them, I wanted to launch a hackathon-type mini-competition where anyone can participate. It would be completely non-profit for me or my team. Everything would be 100% transparent: how much fund is collected and how much is distributed. The rest of the money would either be refunded or used for the next round.

The plan was to hold these twice a month (one startup can only participate once a month). I was thinking of charging just ₹200 per user to apply. The prize pool would be decided by the number of users who register , like if just 20 users pay, 1 startup gets ₹4k. As people increase, the prize automatically increases. After growth, we could fix a ratio of 1 winner out of every 50 participants. It would be completely community driven and up to the majority. The deciders would be a third party ,trusted mods or people who have scaled platforms , judging purely on Zoom based on your hard work, grit, and aspiration, NOT your market size, resume, or background.

The bad thing? I am totally busy with my own startup. I could only handle this for the initial 2-3 rounds, and then I’d have to find a trusted person to hand it over to.

The Consequences

But guys, as I started thinking deeply about the logistics and digging into the legalities, I hit a massive wall.

Even though my intentions are 100% non-profit and community-first, charging an entry fee (₹200) to create a pooled cash prize that gets distributed to winners looks legally identical to a lottery or gambling ring under Indian law. Private parties cannot run lotteries, and if a government authority flagged this, the whole project would get shut down instantly, regardless of how transparent the math was.

On top of that, let's be realistic about the scale:
If only 20 people join, ₹4,000 does not solve a startup's problems. It barely pays for a domain and some hosting credits.

Because I am incredibly busy running my own main startup, manually managing cash pools, registrations, and chasing down judges every two weeks would become an administrative nightmare that would cause the community to crash the moment I handed it over.

new version-

I still want to solve this problem for student founders, but I am scraping the entry-fee model completely to protect the community and make this legal, sustainable, and actually helpful.

Here is the new plan: Instead of a lottery ticket disguised as a competition entry, a software utility platform packed with helpful tools for early-stage builders (including an interactive Pitch-Deck Health Checker, an Indian GST invoice maker, and a Reddit-style traction community .

You won't pay an entry fee. You will just pay a regular subscription for these tools. 100% of the software value is delivered to you. Then, we are taking the revenue generated from those subscriptions and giving it directly back to the community .

We will keep the exact same community ratio: for every 50 active subscribers, and will fund one hard-working, grit-driven student founder. By pivoting to this model, we turn this into a legitimate ecosystem where your subscription literally funds the next generation of Indian builders.

u can support this nitiative by

To kickstart very first competition round, it needs some

1. 4–5 Trusted Judges: mods, tech leads, or founders who have built and scaled platforms. You won't get any financial benefit, but you will get a completely new experience judging raw talent, looking at real proof of work, and helping genuine builders who just need a break.
2. A Core Partner If you are passionate about the Indian startup ecosystem, have a bit of free time, and want to help manage operations, filter applications, and grow the community, let's build this together.

What do you guys think of this pivot? If you want to judge, build with me, or just use the tools , drop a comment below or DM me.

does it still has any risk or legal issues?
It’s just a late-night thought , hopes it ,work

We are expanding our services for users living outside our current operational areas (Mumbai, Delhi, Lucknow, Bangalore, Nanded, and Parbhani).

Through our new centralized model, you can now have products shipped directly to our hubs in Pune, Parbhani, or Nanded.

How it works:

1. The product is shipped to one of our hubs.
2. Our team inspects and verifies the item.
3. Once verification is successful, the seller gets paid.
4. We ship the product to the buyer.

Offer: shipping and inspection will be completely free for the first few deals.

Hey guys,
A week ago we launched the platform. The whole point of the platform is to stop the classic OLX/Facebook Marketplace scams ( fake listings, ghosting, etc.) by providing physical verification at doorstep. with logistics.
but Nobody wants to be the first one to try it because they don't want to risk their money on a new site. Totally understandable.
So, We’re looking for 10 "Early Bird" users to do the first few deals on the platform with zero servise fee.
To make it completely risk-free
We’re waiving all the verification and platform fees for these first 10 slots. you can connect with us on r/Zhold_community.
we are active for sellers in this cities -
Delhi, Mumbai ,Lucknow,Bangalore etc.

i would love to hear your recommendations.
thank you !

Thank you so much for the support! Our mission is to bring trust in the secondhand market, and your amazing feedback lets us know we're on the right track. We want to ensure that whenever you think of buying used online, your first thought is, 'Zhold verifies it.'

We are constantly improving day by day because of users like you. Looking forward to helping you score your next great deal!

its my own startup😜 , trying to solve scams in used markeplaces.
you can chek it at r/Zhold_Community .