I build professional custom websites with backend setup for small businesses and consultants. Since I’m still growing my portfolio, I usually charge around 4k to 5k.

Recently, a client agreed to pay 4.5k for a website. I spent 3 days building it, designing everything, setting up the backend, and making it look professional.

After seeing the final website, he suddenly said he could only pay 3k because he was facing financial problems.

I explained that I genuinely couldn’t do that since a good chunk already goes into hosting and other setup costs.

Now I’m wondering, was I wrong for refusing? How do freelancers usually handle situations like this?

500 / page

Seo setup

Mobile friendly

Lead generation

Customised design

Portfolio : www.zyradigitals.com

Expert in e-commerce business, professional with top ecom giant brands in india and globally.

Ask me anything about marketplaces, Shopify, meta ads, google ads, retention marketing or anything.

Marketplaces amazon, flipkart l, meesho etc.

Ask me about social media strategy or seo strategy.

Shipping services, checkout services, payment gateway, anything.

Feel free to drop your doubts. Will answer to all

If you had ₹50,000 and 6 months to build a business in India, what would you start?

Some ideas

*Digital marketing agency

*AI automation services

*Content creation

*E-commerce

\*Freelancing

Personally, I think service-based businesses are the best way to start with low capital.

I recently created a community for founders and business enthusiasts where we discuss startup ideas, finance, and entrepreneurship.

If you're interested, feel free to join from my profile 😉

Would love to hear your ideas.

\#Thefoundersclubb

need help setting up Lemonsqeezy anyone from India

Pls dm or comment I want to understand few things

i dont have GST or registered business Just an indie hacker, any other alternative

rezorpay and dodopayments both asking for GST

Most people don’t fail in business.

They never start.

Common reasons:

*Fear of losing money

*Fear of what others will say

*Waiting for the “perfect” idea

*Believing you need lakhs to begin

But the truth is:

Many successful businesses in India started with small amounts of capital and a simple idea.

You don’t need a perfect plan.

You need to start.

Even ₹10,000–₹50,000 is enough to test an idea.

Examples:

*Freelancing

*Digital marketing

*Content creation

*E-commerce

*AI services

I've created a community for founders and investors If you're interested, feel free to join from my profile 😉

The biggest risk is not starting at all.

*What’s stopping you from starting your own business?

My Indian friends has been settled in Guangzhou for years working in different sectors now and have built a trusted community with factory and supplier across China Guangzhou province.

We've already helped a few Redditors with sourcing and sample needs, and now looking to build more genuine India-China business connections and create a larger network for those who are limited to opportunities.

If you're an importer, reseller, startup, or someone wanting to start sourcing from China, feel free to connect.

I also have Friends also who travel frequently between China and India , so sometimes small samples can be brought directly by them instead of expensive shipping if its feasible .

Please connect only for genuine business purposes or assistance. Even simple sourcing/sample requests take time and effort from people on both sides, so casual inquiries can't really be entertained.

After getting laid off and struggling to find stable work, I started building custom websites for small businesses and professionals like CAs, loan consultants, and agencies.

These aren’t template websites,they’re modern, premium-quality custom websites similar to what bigger agencies charge ₹20k–₹25k for. Since I’m still building my portfolio and client base, I usually charge around ₹4k–₹4.5k.

To reduce risk for clients, I even offer a simple deal:
I build the website first, and only if they genuinely like it, they can proceed with payment. No obligation otherwise.

The confusing part is this:
Many clients absolutely love the website when I show it to them. They praise the design, say they only need 2–3 small revisions, and promise to send the changes in a few hours.

But then suddenly:
- they stop replying,
- ignore messages,
- or completely ghost me.

I genuinely want to understand this from a business perspective:
Am I doing something wrong in my process, pricing, positioning, or communication? Or is this something common while working with small businesses and partnership firms?

Let me quickly explain the hardest part of me trying to be an entrepreneur:

1. I begin my day with the mad for ideas newsletter, to get a unique idea every morning

2. At work, I talk to my friends about different ideas I am excited about and then I do research on the ones I loved

3. I start building, and eventually, new information or feedback comes that makes me not so excited about the idea

4. I continue building, but am not longer attached to the idea...my energy fizzles out.

5. New ideas excite me more

6. I quit midway and move to researching new ideas

Are you stuck in the same loop ? If not How did you come out ?

Hi first time founder here I have made a b2b ai tool that filters out inbound leads and removes junk leads that come from meta and google ads now since this is a bootstrapped thing and I have only cold called people for 2 days and I will continue to do so first I am targeting small real firms in india

this idea has already been validated as I spoke with people on reddit and I cold called few people who are from real estate and they faced this issues. Now after a few weeks when I have created the product I tired calling the few leads that I had from linkedin and cold calling few people responded but the conversation went no where

So far I have completed the entire list of people that I made on linkedin around 50 out of which 30 leads were junk few people did not pick up the phone had a first conversation with 7-8 people and I was able to book one meeting

Now I have a few questions-

- Somebody suggested apollo for leads but is apollo realiable for leads or does it give junk leads usually

- what are the other tools or ways that I can get leads

- Should I hire a few interns and then one person can focus on one state like if i hire two interns then one person can focus on maharashtra and one person can focus on gujrat and I can focus on all the leads from apollo or should I just pick one state it would be maharashtra since it has the maximum number of real estate firms and just do that only till I get 1-2 paying clients

I would really appreciate it if somebody can guide me . Thank you

A couple of months ago, FinBooks.ai was just an idea on a whiteboard.

Today, 38 organisations and 7 CA firms are actively using it.
The crazy part?

None of this started with “let’s build an AI startup.”

It started with frustration.
I come from a finance background, and I kept seeing the same problems everywhere:

•endless GST reconciliations
•manual bookkeeping
•spreadsheet chaos
•invoice mismatches
•hours wasted on repetitive accounting work

Everyone treated it as normal.
But honestly, it felt broken.

So we started building FinBooks.ai with one simple goal:
Make bookkeeping and compliance less painful for businesses.

The first few months weren’t about scaling.
They were about listening.

Every conversation with a CA firm or business owner changed something in the product.

One user asked for customizable MIS reports.
Instead of pushing it into a “future roadmap,” we built and shipped it.

That became our philosophy:
Listen closely. Ship fast. Simplify relentlessly.

Today, FinBooks.ai helps businesses with:
•Reconciles GSTR-1 and GSTR-2B against your books automatically
•Flags ITC mismatches and Rule 37A exposure
•Imports invoices directly from portal JSON into your books
•Real-time bank reconciliation
•MIS reports, payroll, and a virtual CFO assistant

Still early and improving. But seeing real businesses rely on something we built has been incredibly rewarding.

Would genuinely love feedback from founders, accountants, and finance folks here.

Website: https://finbooks.ai/

Recently did a branding exercise for a local manufacturer making tractor side dalla (tractor trolley side panels) in a sand-belt region. Business is worth crores. Owner is a third-generation guy with zero formal business education - and one of the sharpest operators I've come across.

The area has heavy sand extraction activity - tractor demand is perennial, and so is the demand for dalla. Competitors exist. Some even undercut on price.

But here's his answer when I asked about competition:

"Let them undercut. My customers come back because their dalla never breaks —and if it ever does, I fix it free. For life."

He's kept 2 full-time technicians on monthly salary to honour this promise. But here's the kicker - there's barely any repair work coming in, because the product is genuinely built to last. The warranty cost is near zero. The trust dividend? Enormous.

The math behind the moat:

• Promise -> Lifetime free repair
• Cost of promise -> 2 technicians on monthly pay
• Actual repair volume -> Near zero
• Word-of-mouth flywheel -> Entire region, for decades

In a market where the buyer - typically a farmer or transporter - has very little margin for downtime or repair costs, a lifetime warranty isn't a gimmick. It's a signal of skin in the game. Customers feel it. And they talk.

No ads. No distributor network. No digital presence. Just a product that holds up - backed by a man who stakes his name on it.

The real lesson: Customer loyalty in rural markets isn't bought - it's earned through reliability and kept through accountability. The warranty didn't create loyalty. The product did. The warranty just made the promise visible.

I swear sometimes it feels like half of management is just following up again and again 😭

“Bro did you finish that?”
“Any update?”
“Can you send it today?”
repeat every single day...

At some point it stops feeling like delegation and starts feeling like babysitting.

Curious how other founders/team leads solve this honestly.

Better systems?
Daily accountability?
SOPs?
Or just hiring better people?

Hey everyone, I really need some help or guidance here.

I run a B2B SaaS company in India, scaled the company to ~$350k ARR and decided to registered a company. The company registeration process is now completed.

I have been consuming services/servers from various providers outside of India which requires monthly payments in USD (these services are not at all replacable with any Indian providers so please no solutions related to shifting the providers)

Because of the nature of our work, we need to make frequent payments — sometimes bi-weekly ($3k), and sometimes montly (~$5-8k). The services does not have a fixed payment it depends based on the usage and our requirements.

So far I used pay all payments via my credit card because it had 0 forex markup. Now after company registeration, I do understand that I cannot use that option anymore and I need to use my company account for everything.

I spoke to IDFC First Bank representative, but they said for every single international payment (even $1), I need paperwork and a CA certificate. Along with that using debit card is not an option at all (he strictly said no that it is not at all possible, he mentioned if I use debit card I will face a lot of issues at later stages with compliances). On top of it they also mentioned whatever payments I make I need to first get the Vendor approved by bank everytime vefore making any transactions. Only route they suggested was do wire transfer for the services.

Since debit card is out of picture, my problem is how do I do payments now specially for the subscriptions that I have. It is practically impossible to do transactions each week and the manual work seems very tedious. Plus not using debit cards take a lot of options out like Paypal, etc. I can use Paypal to pay in INR but then they charge more than 4% forex markup, which makes it not sustainable in long-term.

I chose IDFC First Bank since they offer lowest forex markup from my research. Even when I went there they offered best currency conversion rates as well as lowest forex markup. But the other terms and conditions are a deal breaker for me. But I am not sure which bank to choose.

Also is he right about using debit cards for international payments will really cause major issues if I use it for USD payments?

Is anyone here running a business in India and making similar, frequent international payments?

If yes, how are you managing it? Which bank do you use.

Would really appreciate any advice or real-world experience. This will become a major bottleneck for us.

Is it this hard to do payments in USD, like when I was not a registered company and just an indvidual running a company it was way easier while I understand it is difficult for businesses but I never thought it would be this difficult. Any advise and guidance is appreciated.

Thanks in advance 🙏

I run a lean team and got quoted ₹4 lakh+ per month by an agency for competitor monitoring and market insights. No chance that fits our budget right now. So I’ve been doing it manually every week, checking websites, social pages, reviews, pricing changes, job posts and newsletters. It works, but it’s eating 4 to 5 hours weekly, which is time I should be spending on sales. How are other small business owners handling this without burning time or cash?