Jury and mentoring
Jury and mentoring
The difference between getting funded and getting rejected is rarely about your cause.
From What Corporates Look for Before Funding Your NGO, 2026
Bring Raghu Vamsi Kadiri in to judge awards, pitch competitions and hackathons, select fellows, or mentor young founders. He judges the way he would want to be judged: prepared, specific and fair.
Juries he sits on
CSR and social impact awards
Assessing programmes by what changed for people, not by the size of the budget or the brochure.
Youth and changemaker awards
Recognising young people for work that is real, sustained and owned by the community it serves.
Pitch, B-plan and social innovation competitions
For colleges, incubators and foundations, from screening to the final round.
Social-good hackathons
Judging prototypes on whether the people they are built for would actually use them.
Fellowship and grant selection
Reading applications closely and interviewing candidates for fellowships and small grants.
Cohorts and juries
Mentoring young founders and sitting with cohorts that test ideas before they meet the world.
What he looks for
Five questions he asks of every entry.
- Is the problem real and specific? Who has it, how often, and how do you know?
- Who is closest to it? Is the community part of the solution, or only its audience?
- Evidence over adjectives. Numbers with sources, before-and-after, honest baselines.
- Will it last? Without the founder, without this grant, after the launch photo.
- Honesty about what failed. The entries he trusts most say what did not work.
How he judges
- Reads every entry before the day.
- Declares any conflict of interest and steps out of those decisions.
- Gives written feedback when the organiser allows it.
- Keeps deliberations and scores confidential.
Mentoring
Incubators and accelerators
Mentor sessions for social enterprises and impact startups on model, partnerships and CSR funding.
College E-cells and fellowships
Cohort sessions and office hours for student founders and fellows.
One-to-one calls
Short calls for individuals, booked directly on Topmate.
Good to know
Can Raghu join our jury online?
Yes. Screening rounds and many finals work well online. For finals with live pitches, he can join in person or remotely.
Does he mentor individuals?
Yes, through short one-to-one calls booked on Topmate, and through incubator and fellowship programmes.
What if he knows one of the entrants?
He declares it to the organiser and steps out of the decision on that entry.
Is there a fee?
It depends on the time involved. For student-led and nonprofit initiatives, say so in your request.
Building a jury or a mentor bench?
Send the programme, the dates, the number of entries and what the role involves.
Want one-to-one mentoring?
Short calls for founders and students, booked directly.