How to make an app for your business in India

We will start with the part most people selling app development will not tell you: most small businesses in India should not build an app. We say that on our own websites and apps page too, and it costs us work.

Here is how to tell whether yours is an exception, what it actually costs, and what to do instead if it is not.

The real problem with a small business app

An app asks a customer to search a store, download 40MB over their data, create an account, and then keep your icon on a phone that is already out of space. People will do that for their bank, their food delivery, their train tickets. They will not do it for the salon they visit every six weeks.

The question is not "can we build an app". It is "will the same customer open this thing again next week". If the answer is no, the app will be installed by your family and nobody else.

When an app genuinely makes sense

• Customers deal with you weekly or more often — a gym, a tiffin service, a daily delivery.
• You need something a browser cannot do — push notifications people act on, offline use, GPS tracking for a delivery fleet, a scanner.
• You have a captive group that must use it: a tuition class with parents and students, a society, a staff app.
• The app is the business — the product itself, not a marketing channel for a shop.

If none of those describe you, the honest answer is that the money buys more customers somewhere else.

What it costs in India

• No-code builders (Glide, Adalo, AppMySite and similar): roughly Rs 1,000–5,000 a month, forever. Fast, limited, and you stop having an app the month you stop paying.
• Freelance Android app: from about Rs 25,000 for something simple, into the lakhs once you need accounts, payments and an admin panel.
• Agency, Android and iOS with a backend: from around Rs 5 lakh.
• Ongoing: server and database from a few hundred rupees a month upward, plus maintenance. Android and iOS both change every year and an app that is not updated eventually stops being accepted by the store.

The store costs and rules nobody mentions

• Google Play: a one-time developer registration fee of USD 25, about Rs 2,200.
• Apple: USD 99 a year, about Rs 8,700, every year, or the app comes down.
• Google’s testing requirement: a personal developer account opened recently must run a closed test with at least 12 testers who stay opted in for 14 continuous days before it can apply for production access. Finding twelve people who will install a test build and leave it on their phone for a fortnight is harder than it sounds — budget for the delay.
• Review time: both stores review new apps and updates, which adds days.

The cheaper things that usually work better

1. WhatsApp Business — catalogue, quick replies, broadcast lists, payment links. Free, and your customer already has it open.
2. A progressive web app — a website that adds to the home screen and behaves like an app. No store, no fees, no review wait, updates instantly. Covers booking, ordering, menus and loyalty for a fraction of the cost.
3. A proper website with booking or ordering built in — see our website guide.
4. Your Google Business Profile, filled in properly. For a local business this brings more customers than an app ever will, and it is free.

If you are still going ahead

1. Write down the one thing the app must do. One. Everything else is version two.
2. Get three quotes and ask each for two apps they have shipped that are live in the store today.
3. Agree who owns the code and the store accounts in writing, before any payment.
4. Pay in stages against working screens, never fully in advance.
5. Budget the first year of maintenance at the start, not when it breaks.

We take app work only when we are confident we can finish and support it, and we say no more often than yes. If you want a straight opinion on whether your business needs one, send us what you are trying to do — we will tell you if a website or WhatsApp would do the same job for a tenth of the money.