u/Automatic_Mirror_444

Day before yesterday, my friend and I had a meeting with a founder who wanted to create a pet app in banglore through referrals. It wasn't just a simple app. He wanted features like buying and selling pets, grooming bookings, boarding, doctor consultations, pet profiles, live tracking, notifications, an admin panel, a modern interface, role based access, and a few other things we discussed during the meeting.

We spent around 45 minutes understanding everything before putting together a rough estimate. We quoted ₹1.5 lakh.

There was not any argument. He was thinking for a few seconds and said it was far beyond what he expected. He asked if we could reduce the price.

We weren't trying to overcharge. We based our pricing on the amount of work involved. If we cut half the features, the budget could decrease. But building everything he described was not less

Most of our work so far has come from referrals through my friend studying in Australia, and a 2-3 of it has been for Australian clients. We've developed business software before, but this would have been one of our first larger consumer app projects with a founder from Bangalore.

So I wanted to know If you were the founder, what budget would you expect for an app like this? And for the developers here, does ₹1.5 lakh sound reasonable, too high, or too low? Help me with this.

A few weeks ago, we got into a meeting with a company from Australia. I assumed they wanted us to build another customer-facing app. But I was wrong. They wanted an internal Android APK just for their employees.

Every day, their team was switching between different apps for invoices, quotations, PDF generation, QR codes, document scanning, tax calculations, image uploads, and data collection. Their biggest problem wasn't getting more customers—it was the time they were wasting every single day. Instead of using ten different apps, they wanted one simple app that did everything in one place.

That conversation made me realize something. We always think the next big software idea is another social media app or AI product, but sometimes the most valuable software is the one nobody outside the company will ever see because it quietly saves hundreds of hours every month.

It made me wonder...

If your company could replace all its internal tools with one custom app, would you do it, or would you still prefer using separate apps?

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A few days ago, a founder from Bangalore approached us with a startup idea.

His budget?

₹25,000.

The problem wasn't the money.

The problem was the scope.

He wanted features that would realistically cost several lakhs to build.

When we explained that, he kept saying,

«"This is all I have. I can't pay more."»

Honestly, it was frustrating.

As developers, we're expected to build everything for the price of a phone.

Building software isn't just writing code. It's planning, designing, testing, fixing bugs, infrastructure, and months of work.

We genuinely liked his idea.

At first, we said no.

Then we spent more time understanding why he was building it.

He wasn't trying to get a cheap app.

He simply couldn't afford to pay everything upfront.

So instead of rejecting the project completely, we offered him an EMI payment option.

That way, he could start building his startup without compromising on the product, and we could still take on the project sustainably.

It made me wonder...

If someone has a great idea but doesn't have enough money yet, should founders wait until they can afford it, or should developers be more flexible with payment options?