We plan to bring eChai across 100 cities in India. It starts with eChai Startup Demo Day on 26 September, all in person. 11 cities confirmed, 321 founders registered. Any city that reaches 20 interested founders is on too. See your city
Everything from

Ptolemay

2 resources from Ptolemay we point founders to, and the questions each answers.

📄 Article
✓ Link checked Free Beginner

This is the clearest walkthrough of turning a build into payment-linked milestones (prototype, then beta, then launch), where cash only moves after a deliverable passes acceptance. It is written for founders, not lawyers, and includes a real case where breaking a project into five milestones let the founder prune features at each gate and cut actual spend by about a quarter. It also compares milestone-based against fixed-price and time-and-materials so you can tell when each one actually fits.

Software & Mobile App Development Contract for Startup Founders

From Ptolemay by Olga Gubanova ~20 min read

  • Tie each payment to a concrete deliverable that passes acceptance, not to a calendar date, so you never pay ahead of working software.
  • Milestones double as decision gates: you can re-scope or drop low-value features between them instead of being locked into the original plan.
  • Milestone-based is not always right. Fixed-price suits a frozen spec, and time-and-materials suits an MVP that is still shifting.
Open ptolemay.com →
📄 Article
✓ Link checked Free Beginner

An honest breakdown of what a no-code MVP actually costs once you add hosting, tool subscriptions, and paid tiers, so the number is not a fantasy. It also flags when to stop and rebuild, which keeps you from pouring more into a stack that is fighting you. Good for setting a realistic first budget instead of the cheap monthly myth.

The real cost of no-code MVPs

From Ptolemay ~10 min read

  • No-code is cheap but not free once tools and hosting stack up
  • Budget for subscriptions and paid tiers, not just the platform
  • Know the point where a no-code build should be rebuilt properly
Open ptolemay.com →
Answers Is no-code cheaper than hiring a developer? How much should I spend building an MVP as a bootstrapped founder in India, and where does the money actually leak?
eChai Partner Brands