TRANSPARENT PAID PLACEMENT

The ranking is
in the payment.

Sponsored rankings sort startups by the sum of confirmed, unrefunded lifetime payments, highest first. Amounts are recorded in INR. The same amount rolls up through a startup’s geographic hierarchy.

City → state → country → world

An Ahmedabad startup paying ₹3,000 outranks a Surat startup paying ₹2,000 on Gujarat’s sponsored list. The Ahmedabad payment also counts in India’s list and the world list. It does not appear in another city’s local list. A California payment counts in its city, California, the United States and the world, using exactly the same rule.

Lifetime contributions

Your total paid amount counts toward your rank for as long as the listing is live. Add more at any time to climb. Payments never expire.

Ties and refunds

Equal totals are ordered by the time the startup reached its current total. If those timestamps are identical, the startup ID provides a stable final tie-breaker. A refunded payment is removed from ranking totals. A partial refund suspends that payment’s entire contribution until the operator resolves it.

Confirmation comes from the server

Only payments checked against the stored order and confirmed as captured by Razorpay activate placement. A browser success message by itself does not count. Duplicate confirmations are processed once.

The free directory

Free discovery supports alphabetical and recently listed sorting. Every leaderboard shows labelled paid positions before free listings; free listings are newest approved first. Funding, fabricated engagement and payments never become an undisclosed quality score.

What rank does not promise

Payments buy a sponsored placement. Traffic, customers, sales and a permanent #1 position are not guaranteed. Another founder may pay more. Preview rankings are examples and are labelled as such.