Custom web app development, scoped before it is priced.
We build the software your business runs on — portals, dashboards, internal tools and SaaS front ends — starting with a paid two-week discovery sprint at ₹1,00,000 / $1,200 that produces a real scope and a fixed-price quote. Builds start at ₹9,00,000 / $18,000, and the sprint fee comes off that if you go ahead.
What counts as a web app here
Seven shapes, and they cover almost everything people mean by the phrase. If yours is not on the list, it is probably a variation of one of them.
Customer portals
Where your clients log in to see their own data, documents, orders or account.
Admin dashboards
The screen your team lives in all day, built around the job rather than around the database.
Internal operations tools
The spreadsheet that has outgrown being a spreadsheet, and the manual process wrapped around it.
Booking and scheduling
Availability, capacity, reminders, payments and the awkward rules every real business has.
Marketplace back ends
Two-sided flows: listings, matching, payouts, disputes, and the admin that referees them.
SaaS front ends
A product interface on an API you already have, built to ship rather than to demo.
Reporting interfaces
Data-heavy screens that stay fast when the table has two million rows in it.
And what we do not build
- Native mobile apps for the app stores — a web app that works properly on a phone, yes; a Swift or Kotlin build, no
- Blockchain and token work
- Machine-learning model development, though we will happily build the interface around a model your team runs
Saying this up front costs us a few enquiries and saves everyone the call where it turns out in minute forty.
The discovery sprint — ₹1,00,000 / $1,200, two weeks
This is the honest answer to “how much will it cost”. A real number needs a real scope, and producing one is work, so it is priced like work.
- A written scope: every screen, every rule, every thing explicitly out of it
- A data model — the entities, how they relate, and what happens on delete
- Wireframes for the core flows, enough to argue with before anyone writes code
- A technical approach, with the trade-offs named rather than assumed
- A fixed-price build quote against that scope
- A delivery schedule with the dependencies on your side marked
You own all of it either way. The scope, the wireframes and the quote are yours to take to another studio, to your own team, or to a board that needs a number before it will approve anything. We would rather sell a sprint to someone who then builds it elsewhere than sell a build nobody has scoped. And if you go ahead with us, the ₹1,00,000 / $1,200 comes off the build price.
What we build it with, and why
Boring, well-supported technology that someone else can pick up. Novelty in a stack is a cost your successor pays.
- Front end
- Next.js and React. Server-rendered where it needs to be indexed or fast on a cold load, client-side where it needs to feel like an application.
- Back end
- Node or Python, depending on what the work is. Python when there is real data processing; Node when the app and the API should share a language.
- Database
- PostgreSQL — Neon or RDS. Relational, because most business rules are relationships and pretending otherwise is a decision you pay for in year two.
- Auth and storage
- Supabase where rebuilding sign-in, sessions and file storage would be work without a customer benefit.
- Payments
- Stripe internationally, Razorpay in India. Subscriptions, one-off charges and the webhook plumbing behind both.
- Hosting
- Vercel for most, or a managed VPS we run when the workload or the data residency needs one.
If the app needs its own server rather than a platform, we run that too — server management covers patching, firewalling, monitoring and restores.
What it costs
From ₹9,00,000 / $18,000 after discovery, quoted fixed against the scope. Payment is 50% before work starts, 40% when you approve the staging build and 10% at launch — and nothing goes live until 90% is paid, which is a rule we apply to everyone including the clients we like.
A change to the scope is quoted and approved in writing before it enters the work. That is what keeps a fixed price fixed.
Running it after launch
An application needs more attention than a website: dependency updates that break things, error tracking somebody reads, uptime alerting, and a response time you can plan around. That is Care Growth — eight hours a month and an eight-hour response — plus server management if it runs on its own instance.
An app with nobody attached decays faster than a brochure site, because it has more moving parts and more of them are somebody else’s.
Four phases, and the third is the one people forget
Most of our product work is for software companies and operators replacing an internal process that has outgrown a spreadsheet.
- 01
Discovery
Two weeks
The sprint above. You end it with a scope, a quote and a schedule, whoever builds it.
- 02
Core build
6–12 weeks
The data model, the authentication, and the two or three flows the product actually lives on. Demoed weekly on a staging URL.
- 03
The long tail
3–6 weeks
The admin, the edge cases, the exports, the emails. This is the half that gets underestimated everywhere, which is why it has its own phase.
- 04
Launch and watch
30 days
Deploy, monitor, fix. Error tracking and uptime alerting from day one, not added after the first incident.
If you are a software company, the surrounding work usually matters too — the marketing site, the docs, the pricing page that has to match the billing. How we work with SaaS teams.
Web app questions, answered
How much does it cost to develop a web app?
Builds here start at ₹9,00,000 / $18,000 and most land between that and about three times it. Anyone quoting a precise figure before scoping is guessing, and the guess is either padded or about to become a change-request argument. That is why the first step is a paid two-week sprint at ₹1,00,000 / $1,200 that produces a real number, credited against the build if you go ahead.
How much does it cost to pay someone to develop an app?
If you mean by the hour rather than by the project: our rate for agency and staff-augmentation work is ₹2,000 / $40 an hour in 40-hour blocks. For a product build we would rather quote the whole thing fixed, because hourly billing pays us to be slow and neither of us wants that incentive in the room.
Can ChatGPT build me an app?
It can write a lot of the code, and we use those tools ourselves for the parts where they are genuinely faster. What they do not do is decide what the app should be, hold a data model consistent across forty screens, handle the migration when the model changes in month four, or be responsible when payments break at midnight. A prototype is a weekend now. A system your business runs on is still engineering.
Do I need a company to start an app?
Not to build or test one. You will need a registered entity to take money — Stripe and Razorpay both require one before they will settle funds — and to sign contracts with customers. Which entity and where is a question for an accountant in your country rather than for us, and anyone in our industry who answers it confidently should be ignored.
How long does it take?
Two weeks of discovery, then typically three to five months to a first real release. The variable is almost never the code — it is how quickly decisions get made on your side. We build the schedule with your dependencies marked so that is visible from week one rather than discovered in week nine.
Who owns the code?
You do, in full, once it is paid for. Repository, infrastructure, database, and the documentation to hand it to someone else. There is no licence back to us and nothing in the stack that only we can operate. We would rather earn the next phase than hold the last one hostage.
Can you take over an app someone else built?
Often, and it is a large part of what we do. We start with a paid review — the same two weeks — that tells you honestly what state it is in, what it would cost to stabilise, and whether a rebuild is genuinely cheaper. Sometimes the answer is that it is fine and you need one developer, not an agency, and we will say that.
What if we only need part of it?
Then buy part of it. A discovery sprint on its own is a legitimate purchase — you own the scope and the quote and can take them anywhere. So is a single flow, an integration, or a team topped up with our developers for a quarter under the white-label rate.
Tell us what you are trying to build
Rough is fine. The first reply will tell you whether it sounds like a discovery sprint, a smaller piece of work, or something we are the wrong people for.
Or start with a call
30 minutes with someone who has built this kind of thing before. We will tell you what the hard part of your particular app is, which is usually not the part you expect.