Building for India: Latency, Cost, and Regional Nuance

I have spent my career building software from India, for global clients. But building software for India is different. The constraints are different. The users are different. The assumptions that work in San Francisco often fail in Pune.

This is what I have learned about building technology products for the Indian market.

Why 200ms Matters More Here

In markets with reliable, low-latency internet, an extra 200ms of API response time is annoying but tolerable. In India, it can break your product.

The compounding problem: Indian users often access services on congested mobile networks with high baseline latency. Your 200ms API call becomes 800ms by the time it reaches the user. Add that to UI rendering, and you are over a second. Add it to every interaction, and your app feels broken.

The retry storm: Users on unreliable networks retry more. If your first request times out, they tap again. Now you have two requests in flight. This amplifies load on your servers and degrades experience for everyone.

What I do about it:

• Aggressive caching. If data can be stale by even a minute, cache it.
• Optimistic UI updates. Show the user immediate feedback; sync with the server in the background.
• Edge deployment. Run compute close to users. Mumbai and Chennai availability zones are not optional.
• Offline-first architecture. Design for the network being unavailable. Sync when possible; work locally always.
• Request coalescing. Batch multiple small requests into fewer large ones. Each round trip is expensive.

Cost Sensitivity Is Not Poverty

Indian enterprise buyers are cost-sensitive. This is often misread as unwillingness to pay. It is not. It is a different value equation.

What I have observed:

• Total cost of ownership matters more than sticker price. Indian buyers calculate rigorously. They want to know implementation costs, training costs, ongoing maintenance, and exit costs. A cheap product with expensive operations loses to an expensive product with cheap operations.
• Predictability beats low prices. Surprise bills erode trust. Flat-rate pricing, even if higher on average, often wins against usage-based pricing with unpredictable spikes.
• ROI must be demonstrable. "Increase productivity" is not enough. Indian buyers want specific, measurable outcomes with clear timelines. If you cannot quantify the value, you cannot close the deal.
• Long-term relationships matter. The first deal is often small—a pilot, a proof of concept. But if you deliver, expansion follows. Indian companies are loyal to vendors who prove themselves.

Localization Beyond Translation

Translating your UI to Hindi is necessary but not sufficient. Real localization goes deeper:

Linguistic diversity: India has 22 official languages and hundreds more in daily use. "Localize to Hindi" misses users in Tamil Nadu, Kerala, West Bengal, and the Northeast. A Marathi speaker in Pune may prefer English to Hindi. Do not assume.

Script and input: Many Indian languages use non-Latin scripts. Does your app handle Devanagari, Tamil, Telugu, and Bengali text correctly? What about mixed-script input where users switch between English and their native language mid-sentence?

Name formats: Indian names do not fit Western first/middle/last models. Some people have single names. Some have names with initials that expand differently in different contexts. Your user model must accommodate this.

Address formats: Indian addresses are notoriously unstructured. Landmarks matter more than street numbers. "Behind the temple" is a valid address component. Your address validation should not reject real addresses.

Date and number formats: India uses the lakh (100,000) and crore (10,000,000) system for large numbers. Displaying "10,00,000" instead of "1,000,000" is not a bug—it is correct localization for Indian users.

Payment and Identity

The infrastructure for payments and identity in India is world-class—but different from Western assumptions:

• UPI dominates. Credit card penetration is low. UPI (Unified Payments Interface) is how India pays. If you do not support UPI, you are excluding most of your potential users.
• Aadhaar integration. The national biometric ID system enables KYC and authentication at scale. For regulated industries, Aadhaar integration is often mandatory.
• Digital India infrastructure. APIs for identity verification, digital signatures, and document retrieval are available through government platforms. Learn them.

The Enterprise Landscape

Selling to Indian enterprises has its own dynamics:

• Decision cycles are long. Hierarchy matters. Multiple stakeholders must align. Budget cycles are rigid. Plan for 6-12 month sales cycles for significant deals.
• Relationships precede transactions. Cold outreach has low yield. Warm introductions, industry events, and referrals open doors. Invest in network building.
• Proof of concept is expected. Indian buyers want to see your solution working in their environment before committing. Be prepared to invest in pilots.
• Local support is non-negotiable. "Email us and we will respond within 24 hours" does not cut it. Indian enterprises expect phone support, ideally with someone who understands their context and time zone.

Building Teams in India

India has extraordinary engineering talent. But hiring and retaining that talent requires understanding the market:

• Competition is fierce. Every global tech company recruits in India. Your employer brand and compensation must be competitive with Google, Microsoft, and well-funded startups.
• Attrition is real. Annual attrition rates of 15-25% are common in tech. Build systems and processes that survive turnover. Document aggressively. Cross-train teams.
• Remote work expectations have shifted. Post-pandemic, flexibility is expected. Fully in-office mandates limit your talent pool. Hybrid models work; rigid policies do not.
• Career growth matters. Indian engineers are ambitious. If they cannot see a growth path in your organization, they will find one elsewhere. Invest in career development and internal mobility.

What I Have Learned

Building for India has made me a better engineer. The constraints force efficiency. The diversity forces flexibility. The scale forces robustness.

The products that win in India are not dumbed-down versions of Western products. They are products designed from the ground up for Indian realities—fast on slow networks, affordable for price-conscious buyers, respectful of linguistic and cultural diversity, and integrated with Indian infrastructure.

If you can build for India, you can build for anywhere. The lessons transfer. The discipline stays.