Startup Costs in India: How Much Money Do You Actually Need to Get Started?
Setting up the company costs about ₹20,000. Staying alive for a year costs a great deal more. Three real budgets, from a solo founder to a five person team, with the numbers written down.
Founders ask what it costs to start a company in India and get told ₹15,000. That is the registration fee, and it is the least interesting number in the whole budget. What you actually need is enough to survive twelve to eighteen months, and that is mostly salaries and rent.
Here is what the line items really look like, followed by three budgets you can copy.
The one time costs
| Item | Typical cost |
|---|---|
| Company incorporation, all in | ₹7,500 to ₹25,000 |
| Trademark application, one class | ₹4,500 government fee plus ₹3,000 to ₹8,000 professional fee |
| Domain and email for a year | ₹1,000 to ₹12,000 |
| Basic website | ₹0 if you build it yourself, ₹25,000 to ₹2,00,000 if you do not |
| Laptops | ₹60,000 to ₹1,20,000 per person |
| Workspace deposit | 1 to 2 months of the seat fee |
The monthly costs, which are the real ones
| Item | Typical monthly cost |
|---|---|
| Salaries | 70% to 85% of everything you spend |
| Workspace | ₹450 a day for a pass, or about ₹8,000 per seat per month |
| Software and tools | ₹3,000 to ₹15,000 for a small team |
| Cloud and hosting | ₹2,000 to ₹40,000, depending entirely on what you are building |
| Accounting and compliance | ₹4,000 to ₹12,000 |
| Marketing | ₹0 to whatever you are willing to burn |
Add the annual compliance load on top: ₹40,000 to ₹1,50,000 a year for a private limited company, less for an LLP.
Budget 1: solo founder, twelve months
You are building something yourself, paying yourself nothing or very little, and working three days a week from a coworking space.
- Setup, one time: ₹35,000
- Workspace: day passes, about ₹5,000 a month
- Tools and hosting: ₹6,000 a month
- Compliance: ₹5,000 a month averaged
- Personal runway: whatever you need to live on
Business cost for the year: about ₹2.3 lakh. The real question is how long you can go without a salary.
Budget 2: three people, twelve months
Two founders and one employee. Assume the founders take ₹50,000 a month each and the employee ₹70,000, which you should adjust to your city and role.
- Salaries: ₹1,70,000 a month, ₹20.4 lakh a year
- Workspace: three dedicated desks at ₹8,000, ₹24,000 a month
- Tools, hosting, compliance: ₹20,000 a month
- Laptops and setup, one time: ₹3,00,000
Year one: about ₹28 lakh. Salaries are 73% of it. Every other line is noise by comparison.
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Budget 3: five people, eighteen months
The shape of a typical pre seed plan. Two founders at ₹75,000 and three employees averaging ₹80,000.
- Salaries: ₹3,90,000 a month, ₹70.2 lakh over eighteen months
- Workspace: a five seater private cabin at roughly ₹11,000 a seat, ₹55,000 a month, ₹9.9 lakh over eighteen months
- Tools, cloud, compliance: ₹40,000 a month, ₹7.2 lakh
- Marketing and sales: ₹30,000 a month, ₹5.4 lakh
- Laptops and setup: ₹5,00,000 one time
Eighteen months: about ₹98 lakh. This is why pre seed rounds in India cluster around ₹1 crore to ₹1.5 crore. It is not a fashion, it is arithmetic.
Runway, in one line
Runway is money in the bank divided by monthly burn. ₹60 lakh in the bank at ₹5 lakh a month is twelve months. Raise when you have six months left, not two, because a round takes three to five months and you negotiate badly when you are desperate.
What not to spend on in year one
- Your own office. A lease plus fit out is ₹40 lakh you have not earned yet, and a three year commitment you cannot forecast.
- Expensive branding. A logo does not fix a product nobody wants.
- Enterprise software. Nearly every tool you need has a free tier that lasts until you are twenty people.
- A big first hire. A senior person joining before there is a product to sell is an expensive way to learn what you should have built.
Two ways to make the money last
Claim your input credit. If you are GST registered, the 18% on your workspace, software and services comes back to you. Over a year on a ₹50 lakh spend that is meaningful money.
Get DPIIT recognition. It is free, and it opens the three year profit deduction under section 80-IAC for eligible startups incorporated before 1 April 2030. Details at startupindia.gov.in.
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