Do you build custom software, or only sell your own products?

Both. The Binary Brain Network ships three of its own products — Folio for hotel room-service billing, Pass for restaurant management, and Slate for hotel management — and takes on custom builds for businesses whose problem those products do not fit. The products are the credential: they are real software running in real properties, not a portfolio of mockups.

How much does custom software development cost in India?

It depends entirely on scope, so any number quoted before scoping is guesswork. We work in two stages: a paid discovery phase that produces a written specification you own outright, then a fixed price against that fixed scope. Not hourly billing, because hourly billing makes slow work profitable. If the discovery concludes that an existing off-the-shelf product solves your problem, we say so and you take the specification elsewhere.

Do you build offline-first software?

Yes, and it is our default for anything operational. All three of our own products run fully offline because Indian hospitality cannot depend on connectivity — a property in a hill station or a restaurant on a busy night cannot stop billing because the internet dropped. Cloud is a legitimate choice for some systems; it is a bad default for anything a business needs at 11pm.

What kinds of systems do you build?

Billing and point-of-sale, property and inventory management, staff attendance and payroll, GST-compliant invoicing, thermal-printer workflows, multi-terminal setups over a local network, and internal operational tools. We work mainly in hospitality, food and beverage, and service businesses, because that is the domain we come from and where our judgement is worth paying for.

Custom Development · India

Custom software, built by people who ship their own.

We build bespoke software for Indian hospitality and service businesses — billing systems, point-of-sale, property management, inventory, internal tools. Fixed scope, fixed price, and the source code is yours at the end.

Most agencies pitching you custom software have a portfolio of things they built for someone else. Ours is three products running in live properties right now, which means the judgement you're paying for has already been tested against a real Saturday night.

Discuss Your Project See What We've Shipped

Shipped & Live

Folio

Room-service billing, running in production at a Mumbai hotel. Offline-first, encrypted, GST-compliant.

In Trials

Pass

Restaurant POS with kitchen display, multi-outlet and recipe-linked inventory. Windows and Linux.

In Trials

Slate

Full hotel PMS — bookings, folios, housekeeping, C-Form, payroll. Windows, Linux and Android.

What We Build

The problems we're actually good at.

We work almost entirely in hospitality, food and beverage, and service businesses. That narrowness is the point — it's where our judgement is worth paying for, and where we can tell you in the first conversation whether your idea will survive contact with a real operator.

Billing & point-of-sale

GST-compliant invoicing, thermal-printer workflows, sequential audit-safe numbering, split and part payments, UPI QR, corrections that version rather than overwrite. We've built this three times; we know where it goes wrong.

Offline-first desktop software

Systems that keep working when the internet doesn't. Local database, encrypted at rest where it matters, automatic backups with a real restore path, and silent updates that never interrupt a shift.

Multi-terminal & local network

A counter, a kitchen screen and three phones sharing one live view over the venue's own WiFi — with zero-config discovery, so nobody is typing IP addresses. Devices that drop off queue their work and catch up.

Inventory, staff & payroll

Recipe-linked stock that deducts itself, wastage tracking, attendance grids, salary sheets computed from attendance and advances, role-based access with PIN authentication.

Indian compliance

GST with flat and per-item rates, GSTIN and FSSAI on documents, GSTR-1 and Tally exports, C-Form and FRRO registers for foreign guests. The unglamorous work that decides whether software is usable in India at all.

Internal operational tools

The spreadsheet that's outgrown itself. Handover logs, day-close reconciliation, owner reporting, approval workflows — the systems a growing business runs on but nobody sells off the shelf.

How It Works

Discovery first. Fixed price after.

We don't quote a number before we understand the problem, and we don't bill by the hour — hourly billing makes slow work profitable, which is the wrong incentive to put between us.

Conversation — free

Tell us the problem. If an existing product solves it — ours or somebody else's — we'll tell you that and you'll have saved yourself a project. This happens more often than you'd expect from someone selling custom development.

Discovery — paid, and yours to keep

We spend time with the people who'll actually use the thing, and produce a written specification: what it does, what it doesn't, how it behaves when things go wrong. You own that document outright. If you take it to another developer, that's a legitimate outcome and there's no clause stopping you.

Fixed price against fixed scope

One number, quoted against the specification, staged across milestones. Scope changes are re-quoted openly rather than absorbed into a vague hourly total. You always know what you're committed to.

Build, with you seeing it early

Working software in front of your staff as early as it's useful, not a reveal at the end. The people who'll use it daily find the problems that a specification never catches.

Handover — code, data and documentation

Source code, database and documentation are yours. We don't hold software hostage as a retention strategy. Ongoing support is a separate agreement you're free to decline, and declining it doesn't cost you access to anything.

How We Work

Four things we won't compromise on.

Your data stays yours

Local-first by default, exportable always. We build so that leaving us is possible — which is the only thing that makes staying meaningful.

Built for the floor, not the demo

The person using it at 11pm with a queue in front of them is the user we design for, not the person who signed the cheque.

We'll tell you not to build it

If off-the-shelf solves your problem, or the project doesn't justify its cost, you'll hear that from us before you've spent anything substantial.

Small team, direct line

You talk to the people writing the code. No account manager relaying your problem to someone you never meet. Support is a WhatsApp message, not a ticket queue.

Answers

What people ask before starting.

How much does custom software cost in India?

It depends entirely on scope, so any number quoted before scoping is guesswork — and usually a number designed to win the conversation rather than survive it. We run a paid discovery phase that produces a written specification you own, then quote a fixed price against that fixed scope. Not hourly, because hourly billing makes slow work profitable. If discovery concludes that an off-the-shelf product solves your problem, we'll say so and you take the specification elsewhere.

Who owns the source code?

You do. Code, database and documentation are handed over at the end. We don't hold software hostage as a retention mechanism — if you want to take it to another developer in two years, nothing in the arrangement stops you. It's worth asking this question of anyone you're considering, because the answer isn't always yes.

Why should I trust a small team over an established agency?

Partly you shouldn't, without evidence — so here's ours: Folio is running in production at a Mumbai hotel, Pass and Slate are in trials with real businesses. That's shipped software, not a portfolio of work done for clients who may or may not still use it. The trade-off is honest: a larger agency gives you more people and more process. We give you direct access to whoever is writing your code, and a team that has made the mistakes in this domain already, at our own expense.

Do you build web apps, or only desktop software?

Both, but we'll push back on web for anything that must work during a power cut or a dead connection. Our own products are offline-first desktop applications for exactly that reason. Web is the right answer for dashboards, reporting, customer-facing booking and anything genuinely multi-location — and Slate is a hybrid, running a local server that phones and tablets reach over the property's own network.

How long does a project take?

A focused internal tool is usually weeks. A full billing or property-management system is months — Folio took considerably longer than that, and it does one thing. Discovery gives you a real timeline instead of an optimistic one, and we'd rather tell you six months honestly than three months you'll resent us for.

Do you work outside Mumbai?

Yes. The Binary Brain Network is the software division of The Big Brand Network, registered in Mumbai and operating across Delhi NCR and pan-India. Installation and training happen on site where that makes sense; day-to-day work and support run remotely over a direct WhatsApp line.

Can you take over software someone else built?

Sometimes. It depends on what state it's in and whether you have the source code — which is precisely why we hand ours over. We'll look at it honestly and tell you whether maintaining it or rebuilding it is the better use of your money. Occasionally the answer is uncomfortable.