The rupee is a different currency, not a smaller one. Yet the default move in Indian SaaS is to take a US price card and divide by eighty — a number that misreads willingness-to-pay at both the bottom and the top of the market.
The divide-by-eighty mistake
Divide-by-eighty under-prices the buyers who would happily pay for clear value, and over-prices the ones for whom the product is a nice-to-have. It optimises for neither. Price is positioning; a number copied from San Francisco positions you as an afterthought.
“Price is positioning. A number borrowed from San Francisco positions you as an afterthought.”
Price the value, not the conversion
Anchor to the budget line your product comes out of and the outcome it changes — hours saved, revenue unlocked, a hire avoided. A tool that saves a founder a lawyer’s fee is not priced against a Netflix subscription.
Building the card
- —Name the budget the spend competes with — and price against that, not a dollar figure.
- —Offer three tiers, not five; make the middle one the obvious choice.
- —Charge per outcome or per seat where it tracks value — avoid per-token meters that breed usage anxiety.
- —Test the number in a real sale before it goes on the site. The card is a hypothesis until someone pays it.