For practices · India · Pilot
Stop giving away the most expensive conversation you have.
Every enquiry opens with “what will this cost?” You answer it perhaps thirty times to win four jobs — off the top of your head, unpaid, and the client holds you to the figure for the next two years.
Archst answers it in ten minutes, as an itemised band, under your practice name.
Two things bleed a small practice, and neither is a drawing problem
The unpaid pre-contract conversation
Dozens of unbilled hours a year spent producing a number you were never paid for, for enquiries that mostly do not convert — and the ones that do carry that number into the contract with them.
Nothing neutral to point at
The client arrives anchored on a relative’s build, in another city, in another year. When reality lands 30% higher, you are the one who “got it wrong” — because the only figure in the room came out of your mouth.
Archst is not estimating software. You already have a spreadsheet you have trusted for eleven years, and it is better than ours at the work you do repeatedly. This is a qualification and expectation-setting tool — it exists to make the first conversation short, defensible and someone else’s fault.
What you actually send the client
1 · A one-page band on your letterhead
Answer a short professional version of the questionnaire — you know the built-up area and do not need it derived from a bedroom count — and get a PDF carrying your practice name, your logo, “prepared by”, the band, the itemised split, the assumptions and the disclaimer.
The disclaimer is not boilerplate here. A range with written assumptions, produced by a tool you did not author, is exactly the neutrality you lack today.
2 · A link you send the prospect
Send a link instead of a meeting. The prospect answers the questions themselves and the result reaches your inbox as a qualified enquiry: style, city, size, facilities, finish level, the budget they have in mind, and the gap between the two.
You find out whether someone with a ₹40 lakh budget and a ₹70 lakh brief is worth a Saturday morning — before you spend it.
3 · Your rates, not ours
Override any band with your practice’s own rate card. You will be right about your own city, and the estimate should say what you would say.
Your overrides stay yours. They are never folded back into the market bands other practices see — one practice’s book is not a market signal, and treating it as one is how an estimate silently drifts.
4 · A stage-payment annexure
The schedule of what proportion of the contract value should have been released by the end of each stage, with guidance on the mobilisation advance — customary at around 10%, high at 20%, a red flag past 25%.
Issued as an annexure to your agreement. Nobody sells this, every practice improvises it, and it is the single thing that most protects your client from the usual way money goes missing on an Indian site: paying ahead of completed work.
Where the numbers come from
The same cost model that runs inside the consumer app — about six thousand lines of it, refreshed as the market moves.
Always a band
Low to high, carried all the way down. Real quotes land in a range; a single figure is a promise you will be held to.
Structure priced on its own
A frame is costed off spans, soil, seismic zone and steel weight — with a floor, because below a certain rupee-per-square-foot it cannot be built at all. It does not get cheaper because the client picked vitrified tile over marble.
City-adjusted
Labour and cartage vary by nearly 50% across Indian cities. Bengaluru runs about 1.18× the national baseline; a smaller town runs well under it.
Installed rates, not material rates
Ply is ₹90/sqft as a board; a finished wardrobe is well over a thousand per square foot of shutter. A ₹150 tile lands near double once laid. The tables carry the second number.
Every figure is an indicative 2026 Indian market band. Nothing Archst produces is a quotation, and no contractor is bound by it — which is stated on the face of every document you send.
The pilot, described honestly
Ten practices, run by hand
There is no self-serve product yet, and we would rather say so than show you a login page that leads nowhere. Right now a person at Archst prepares each estimate — usually within one working day — and sends you the PDF on your letterhead.
That is deliberate. If a hand-made version is not worth using, an automated one will not be either, and we would sooner learn that from ten principals in a month than from a year of building.
What the pilot asks of you
- Send us a real enquiry — city, plot or built-up area, rough brief, finish level, and the client’s stated budget if they have one.
- We return the banded estimate on your letterhead, usually next working day.
- You use it, or you tell us why you would not. Both are useful; the second is more so.
- Twenty minutes on a call at the end of the month, telling us where it was wrong.
What it will cost later
Published early so nobody is surprised, and so you can tell us now if it is wrong. Nothing on this page is for sale today — the pilot is free, there is no checkout here, and we will not ask for payment details until there is a product to charge for and you have agreed a price in writing.
Enquiry
Permanently
- Three estimates a month
- Archst-branded PDF
- The market bands, city-adjusted
Practice
₹14,990 a year
- Unlimited estimates
- Your letterhead and logo
- The client link and lead inbox
Studio
₹39,990 a year
- Everything in Practice
- Your own rate overrides
- The stage-payment annexure
- Several users, one practice
Priced per practice, not per seat — Indian practices are small, and per-seat pricing on a three-person studio collects less money and invites password sharing.
The sum it has to beat. Architectural fees run roughly 5–10% of project cost. On a ₹60 lakh house that is ₹3–6 lakh. Practice, at ₹18,000 a year, is under 1% of your fee on a single job. It has to win you one extra commission a year, or save two days of unbilled estimating. That is the whole argument, and it does not ask you to believe a productivity claim.
What this is not
- Not CAD
- It draws nothing and models nothing. It sits before the drawings, in the conversation where you find out whether there is a project at all.
- Not a quotation tool
- It produces a band with stated assumptions. It will never collapse to one number, including when your client asks — that range is what survives the next two years.
- Not a BOQ
- Categories and lump-sum systems, not items and quantities. Your quantity surveyor is not being replaced.
- Not a lead marketplace
- We do not sell you homeowner leads today, and we will not start without telling you exactly how they were consented to and priced.
- Not a firm of architects
- Archst is a design and budgeting consultancy and is not registered with the Council of Architecture. You are the professional on the record; the document carries your name because the judgement is yours.
The awkward bit, said first
Archst also sells drawing sets to homeowners — architectural, structural, electrical, plumbing — prepared by registered architects and licensed engineers on a panel we engage. You will find that on our home page, and you would rather hear about it from us than notice it later.
So, plainly:
- Who the panel is for
- Homeowners who arrive through the consumer app with a costed plan and no architect. Before Archst existed they went to whoever their contractor suggested. That is the work the panel takes.
- Your enquiries are yours
- An enquiry you send through this tool is your client. We do not contact them, market to them, or quote them for drawings. That is a term of the pilot, and it will be a term of the contract.
- The panel is open
- If you want the work, ask. Drawing sets routed to a practice that already has a plan, a budget and a brief attached are the most qualified brief you will get all year, and we would rather send them to a practice using the tool than to somebody who is not.
If that still sits badly with you, say so on the pilot call. It is exactly the kind of thing worth finding out about in month one rather than month nine.
Your clients’ data, and ours
The consumer app makes a promise we are not willing to qualify: no account, no server, and the homeowner’s budget never leaves their phone. The professional product is therefore a separate product — separate surface, separate terms, separate data handling — rather than the same app with a login bolted to it. The moment that promise needs an “unless”, it has stopped being worth making.
For enquiries you send us, you are the data fiduciary for your client’s information and Archst is your processor, under the Digital Personal Data Protection Act, 2023. In plain terms: it is your client’s data, we hold it only to produce your estimate, we do not market to them, and we return or delete it when you ask. That will be a written data processing agreement before anybody pays anything — during the pilot, ask and we will put it in writing for you first.
Our current consumer privacy policy is here; it covers the app, not this.
Send us less if you would rather. A city, an area, a brief and a budget are enough to produce the estimate. We do not need your client’s name, phone number or address, and the PDF reads perfectly well with “Residence at Whitefield” on it.