Building for India: The Costs Nobody Talks About

India is the world's fastest-growing startup ecosystem. The pitch is compelling: billion-person market, young demographics, growing digital adoption, relatively low costs.

I have been building products for the Indian market for two years. Here is what the pitch misses.

The Real Costs

Domain & Infrastructure

Five products means five domains. Indian domains (.in) cost roughly the same as .com — about $10-12/year each. That is $50-60/year just for domains.

Hosting: Indian cloud providers (like DigitalOcean Mumbai or AWS ap-south-1) are marginally cheaper than US regions, but not dramatically. My Hostinger VPS costs ~$15/month, which is the same globally.

The hidden cost: Latency optimization. If your users are in India and your database is in the US, every query adds 200-300ms. You need Indian-region infrastructure, which limits your provider options.

Payment Processing

Razorpay is the default payment gateway for Indian startups. Getting set up requires:

A registered business entity (sole proprietorship minimum)
PAN card, Aadhaar, bank verification
A website with proper legal pages: Privacy Policy, Terms & Conditions, Refund Policy, Shipping & Delivery, Contact
Clear entity ownership statements
Compliance review (can take 2-4 weeks)

Razorpay charges 2% per transaction. For comparison, Stripe charges 2.9% + 30 cents internationally. The percentage looks similar, but on a ₹499/month subscription ($6), Razorpay takes ₹10 (~12 cents) while Stripe takes ~48 cents. The math works differently at Indian price points.

The real problem: Indian customers expect Indian pricing. A tool that costs $29/month in the US needs to be ₹499-999/month in India to get any traction. Your per-user revenue is 5-10x lower, but your infrastructure costs are the same.

AI API Costs

This is where building from India gets expensive relative to revenue.

I spend ~$20-40/month on Gemini API calls for:

Daily newsletter generation
Blog post creation
Content classification
(Future) content moderation

That is reasonable for a US startup charging $29/user/month. For an Indian product charging ₹499/month (~$6), the AI cost per user becomes a significant line item.

The math: If AI processing costs $0.50/user/month and you charge ₹499 ($6), AI alone is 8% of revenue. Add hosting, payment processing, and support — your margins get thin fast.

Compliance & Legal

India's compliance landscape is tightening:

GST registration required above ₹20 lakh annual revenue
Data localization requirements for certain categories of data
IT Act compliance for platforms that host user content
Consumer protection rules for refunds and cancellations

As a solo builder, I handle all of this myself. Legal consultation is expensive. Templates from the internet are generic. Every product needs customized legal pages.

What Nobody Tells You

UPI Changed Everything (and Nothing)

UPI made payments frictionless. But it also conditioned users to expect everything to be free or cheap. The "pay ₹1 for premium" expectation is real.

Building a sustainable SaaS business in India means fighting against a culture of free alternatives for every tool.

English Content, Regional Reality

Most Indian tech professionals read English content. But their daily workflows are in Hinglish, regional languages, and WhatsApp groups. Your product needs to fit into that reality, not the Silicon Valley productivity stack.

Support Expectations

Indian users expect WhatsApp support. They expect quick responses. They expect personal attention. This is great for building loyal users and terrible for scaling a one-person operation.

Why I Build for India Anyway

I understand the market because I live in it. I know what a sales team in Bangalore actually needs because I managed one.
The problems are real and underserved. Indian B2C sales teams do not have Qwiklo. Indian content creators do not have Creator OS. Indian professionals do not have Profile Insights.
The compounding advantage. If you can build a profitable product at Indian price points, you can scale to any market. The unit economics force discipline.
First-mover in AI-native Indian products. Most Indian AI products are wrappers around ChatGPT. Building genuine AI-powered workflows — like Claw Biswas running an entire content operation — is still rare.

The Honest Budget

| Category | Monthly Cost | Notes | |---|---|---| | VPS Hosting | ₹1,200 (~$15) | Single server, 5 products | | AI API (Gemini) | ₹1,600-3,200 (~$20-40) | Newsletter + blog + classification | | Domains (5, amortized) | ₹400 (~$5) | .in and .com domains | | Google Workspace | ₹500 (~$6) | Email infrastructure | | Razorpay | 2% per transaction | When revenue starts | | Legal/Compliance | Variable | GST, entity maintenance | | Total Fixed | ₹3,700-5,300 (~$45-65) | Before any revenue |

This is achievable. But it is not free. And it requires engineering skills to keep costs this low.