स्तम्भ Stambh · Udyamnīti

The Discount Is a Confession

India’s largest export industry was built on being cheaper per hour. The next cheaper country is a machine. What a services firm is actually saying when it leads with the price.

Nikhil Sharma · उद्यमनीति Udyamnīti · 12 August 2026 · 3 min read

I run GoCommercially, which publishes its prices, and Fabulous.Media, an agency network that competes on them every week.

The cheapest bidder has already told you what he thinks he is worth.

I have sat on both sides of the Indian services table for twenty years. On the buying side I have watched three agencies pitch the same work and the third one cut the number by a third in the room. On the selling side I have been the third agency. Both times the lesson was the same. The firm that leads with the price has told you it cannot describe the result, and the client hears it even when he takes the discount.

This is the national habit, not an agency one. Indian technology services earned $282.6 billion in the year to March 2025 by Nasscom’s count, $224.4 billion of it exported. The industry grew 5.1 per cent and added 1,26,000 people to a headcount of 58 lakh. Those are good numbers and they were built on one proposition. The same hour, done to the same standard, for less. For thirty years that was true and it was enough.

It is still true. It is no longer enough. The next cheaper country is not a country. It is a model that writes the code, reads the contract and drafts the campaign for a price that rounds to nothing. A firm that sold the hour has nothing left to sell when the hour is free. A slow year for Western clients did its share of that 5.1 per cent. Part of it is this, and the part grows.

A low price is what you charge when you cannot describe the outcome. A published price is what you charge when you can.

Price on the tin is not price as the pitch

I will be accused of inconsistency here, so let me get there first. GoCommercially puts its price on the tin. Every service, every number, visible before anyone has spoken to us. How is that not selling on price.

Because they are opposites. A published price is a fixed thing attached to a described outcome. You read what you get, you read what it costs, and you decide. The number is not the argument. The description is the argument and the number is the receipt. A low price is a moving thing attached to nothing. It exists to beat another number in a room, and the moment it has beaten it the firm has no reason to deliver anything but the minimum that keeps the invoice alive.

The test is simple. Ask the firm to raise the price by twenty per cent and say what changes. A firm that sells outcomes can answer in one sentence. More of this, faster, with that guarantee. A firm that sells price cannot answer at all, because nothing was ever attached to the number except the hope of winning.

What the discount costs the one who gives it

The client pays for a discount once. The firm pays for it every month afterwards. It pays in the staff it cannot afford to keep, which is why the account manager changes three times in a year. It pays in the work it cannot afford to check, which is why the error reaches the client. And it pays in the next pitch, where the only way to win is to cut again, because the client has learnt that the number moves if you wait.

I have run a network across eight cities on this lesson. The partner who wins on price loses the account inside two years and blames the client. The partner who holds the price and loses the pitch keeps the next three, because the client who went cheaper comes back, and when he comes back he does not argue about the number.

None of this is an argument for being expensive. It is an argument for being specific. The firm that can say what happens, by when, with what result, can charge what that is worth, and the one that cannot will be undercut by a machine before this year is out.

Written in Gurugram on 12 August 2026, the first of four columns towards a long essay that makes the same argument about a country rather than a firm. India sells surgery on price and has the outcomes to sell instead.

Sources: Nasscom Strategic Review press release, 24 February 2025, for FY2025 revenue of $282.6 billion, exports of $224.4 billion, growth of 5.1 per cent, headcount of 5.8 million and net hiring of 126,000.