---
title: Software Consultant in Bangalore | Samuel Marndi
description: Independent software consultant in Bangalore — scoping, build-vs-buy, architecture review, code audits and second opinions on quotes. Call +91 82803 20550.
source: https://samuelmarndi.com/services/software-consultant-in-bangalore/
site: https://samuelmarndi.com
author: Samuel Marndi
contact: +91 82803 20550 · samuelmarandi6@gmail.com
updated: 2026-10-27
---


# Software Consultant in Bangalore — Independent, and Paid to Say No

Scoping, architecture, audits and second opinions, from someone with nothing to sell you afterwards. Short fixed engagements that end in a document you own and can hand to any developer — including one who is not me.

**Contact Samuel Marndi directly** — +91 82803 20550 (phone and WhatsApp) · samuelmarandi6@gmail.com · https://samuelmarndi.com

Based in Bengaluru, India. Mon–Sat, 9am–7pm IST. Written, itemised quote within 24 hours. He answers enquiries himself.

## Short answer

A software consultant works out what should be built, and whether it should be built at all. An independent day rate in India is **₹25,000–₹75,000**, and most useful engagements run two to eight days — so ₹50,000–₹2,50,000 for a scoping sprint and ₹25,000–₹1,00,000 for a second opinion on somebody else's quote.

The deliverable is a document, not code. It is yours, and it is written so any developer or agency could execute it — including one who is not me.

## Engagements

| Engagement | What it is | Indicative price |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Scoping and feasibility | A written scope precise enough that three developers quote the same thing against it, and you can finally compare the quotes rather than the sales calls. | ₹50,000 – ₹2,50,000 |
| Build versus buy | A costed comparison of building, buying, configuring what exists, and doing nothing. Most needs are ordinary, and ordinary needs have products. | ₹50,000 – ₹2,00,000 |
| Architecture and stack review | The decision made deliberately and written down with its reasons, so the next person inherits reasoning instead of archaeology. | ₹75,000 – ₹4,00,000 |
| Software and code audit | What you actually own, what is at risk, what is wasted, and what to fix first — with a cost against every line. | ₹40,000 – ₹1,50,000 |
| Second opinion on a quote | Someone has quoted you a large number. One or two days to tell you whether it is the right number for the right thing. | ₹25,000 – ₹1,00,000 |
| Project rescue | An honest assessment of what is salvageable and a plan that does not require starting over — because starting over is usually the second mistake. | ₹1,50,000 – ₹6,00,000 |

## A consulting firm, an agency's free consultation, or me

| Factor | A consulting firm | An agency's free consultation | An independent consultant (me) |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| **Day rate** | ₹1,50,000 – ₹3,00,000 | Free | ₹25,000 – ₹75,000 |
| **What the free one costs** | — | It ends in their proposal, every time | — |
| **Can recommend "buy, do not build"** | Yes | Structurally unable to | Yes, and does |
| **Can recommend "do nothing"** | Rarely — the engagement is the product | No | Yes. It is sometimes the finding |
| **Who does the work** | A team, often junior under a partner's name | A pre-sales engineer | The person you spoke to |
| **Deliverable** | A deck, and a follow-on proposal | A proposal | A findings document you own and can give to anyone |
| **Obligation to use them after** | Implied | That is the point of it | None, stated in writing |
| **Speed** | Weeks to start | Immediate | Days |
| **Where it is the wrong choice** | Anything under about ₹50 lakh | Any decision you need to be objective | A multi-year programme needing a dozen people |

## Pricing

| Engagement | Indicative range | What you get | Typical fit |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| **Second opinion on a quote** | ₹25,000 – ₹1,00,000 | A written view on whether the scope, the price and the approach are right | You have been quoted ₹10 lakh or more and cannot judge it |
| **Scoping sprint** | ₹50,000 – ₹2,50,000 | A scope, a page or screen list, acceptance criteria and a realistic budget band | You know roughly what you want and need it specified |
| **Build versus buy** | ₹50,000 – ₹2,00,000 | Four options costed honestly, including configuring what exists and doing nothing | Someone is asking you to approve custom software |
| **Software / code audit** | ₹40,000 – ₹1,50,000 | Findings on ownership, risk, waste and fragility, with costed fixes in priority order | You inherited a codebase, or your developer left |
| **Architecture review** | ₹75,000 – ₹4,00,000 | A decision record: what to build on, what it will cost to run, what it forecloses | You are about to commit to a stack for five years |
| **Project rescue** | ₹1,50,000 – ₹6,00,000 | What is salvageable, what is not, and a plan from where you actually are | A build has stalled and nobody will say why |
| **Advisory retainer** | ₹40,000 – ₹1,50,000 / month | Named days a month: reviews, vendor calls, decisions as they arise | You have no technical leadership and do not need a full-time one |

*Indicative Indian market ranges for 2026, not a rate card — every engagement is quoted as a fixed number of days against a written brief, so you know the total before it starts. The bands derive from an independent advisory day rate of ₹25,000–₹75,000; a large consulting firm bills ₹1,50,000–₹3,00,000 a day for the same calendar time. Sources in content/pricing-sources.md.*

## What an audit finds

| Finding | What it means in practice |
| --- | --- |
| **Who actually owns the code** | No written IP assignment, so under Indian law the copyright may still sit with whoever wrote it. The cheapest finding to fix and the most expensive to discover during a funding round or a sale. |
| **Accounts in the wrong name** | Domain registered to a former developer, hosting on an agency's account, the Play Console under somebody's personal login. Usually fixable, occasionally not. |
| **Backups that are not backups** | A copy on the same server, or a RAID array mistaken for one. Nobody has ever tested a restore, which means nobody knows whether there is a backup at all. |
| **Dependencies years out of support** | The version of the framework, the database or the runtime that stopped receiving security patches some time ago, with no upgrade path written down. |
| **One person who knows everything** | Nothing documented, no second pair of eyes, and a business decision nobody has consciously made about what happens if they leave. |
| **Spend on things nobody uses** | Idle cloud resources, licences renewing for tools three people tried once, a staging environment on production-sized machines since 2023. |
| **Security basics missing** | Default credentials, no multi-factor on administrative accounts, leavers who still have access, secrets committed into the repository. |
| **And often: the thing being built is not the thing needed** | The finding that saves the most money and is the least comfortable to deliver. It is also the one an agency's free consultation will never produce. |

## Frequently asked questions

### What does a software consultant in Bangalore cost?

**An independent advisory day rate in India runs ₹25,000–₹75,000, and most useful engagements are two to eight days.** So a second opinion on a quote is ₹25,000–₹1,00,000, a scoping sprint ₹50,000–₹2,50,000, and an architecture review ₹75,000–₹4,00,000. A large consulting firm bills ₹1,50,000–₹3,00,000 a day for the same calendar time. Everything is quoted as a fixed number of days against a written brief, so you know the total before it starts.

### How is this different from hiring a developer?

A developer builds what you specify; a consultant works out what to specify. If you can already describe what you want, hire a developer and do not pay consulting rates to have it described again. The full version of that argument, including when you need neither, is in [software consultant or software developer?](https://samuelmarndi.com/blog/software-consultant-vs-developer/)

### Will you tell me not to build something?

Yes, and it is the most common finding on a build-versus-buy engagement. Most business needs are ordinary — accounting, CRM, payroll, helpdesk, scheduling — and ordinary needs have products that cost a fraction of a custom build and are maintained by somebody else. An agency offering a free consultation is structurally unable to reach that conclusion, which is what makes the free version expensive.

### Do I have to use you to implement the recommendations?

No, and that is written into the engagement. The findings document is addressed to a decision-maker, not to me, and is deliberately written so any developer or agency could execute it. A consultant whose recommendations always conclude "hire me to build this" is a salesperson with a nicer invoice.

### What is in a software audit, and why does it cost more than your IT audit?

A software audit reads the codebase: ownership and licensing, dependency currency, architecture, security, test coverage, deployment and documentation — ₹40,000–₹1,50,000. The [IT audit](https://samuelmarndi.com/services/it-consulting/) on the IT consulting page is ₹25,000–₹75,000 and covers the estate instead: assets, licences, backups, access and infrastructure risk. The difference is not inconsistency. Reading code takes materially longer than inventorying hardware, and most businesses need one of the two rather than both.

### Can you review a quote I have already received?

That is one of the most common reasons people call, and on a large quote it is the highest-return money in this list. Three days against an ₹18 lakh build is under 2% of the budget, and the usual finding is that the scope should be materially smaller or shaped differently. Send me the quote and the brief it was written against — if there was no brief, that is already the first finding.

### Our developer has left and nothing is documented. Where do we start?

An audit, before anyone changes anything. Somebody has to establish what exists, who owns it, where the accounts are, what it depends on and what will break first. Changing code in a system nobody has mapped is how a bad situation becomes an outage. The audit output is the map, and it is yours whether or not I do anything else.

### Do you do fractional CTO work?

Yes, as a retainer of named days a month at ₹40,000–₹1,50,000 — reviews, vendor conversations and decisions as they arise. It suits a business with real technical decisions to make and no need for a full-time technology leader. What it is not is an unstructured retainer: the days are stated, and so is what happens to them if you do not use them.

### Are you in Bangalore, and does it matter?

I am based in Bengaluru, which matters for the first session of an audit or a scoping sprint — the useful information usually comes from watching people work rather than from a call, and that is easier in a room. Everything after that runs remotely, and plenty of this work is delivered for clients nowhere near Bengaluru. Nothing about reviewing a codebase requires me to be in your city.

### What technologies do you consult on?

Web and mobile application stacks, cloud architecture on AWS and Azure, databases, and AI and LLM systems. Where I will tell you I am the wrong person: embedded firmware, anything safety-critical, and deep data-science modelling. An honest "not me, and here is what to look for in who you hire" is a legitimate outcome of a scoping call, and it costs nothing.

### How quickly can you start?

Usually within a few days for a short engagement, and a scoping call first costs nothing. If the answer on that call is "you do not need a consultant, you need a developer", I will say so then rather than invoice you for discovering it.

### What do you need from me to quote?

What you are trying to do, what exists already, who has worked on it, and any quote or brief in hand. Access comes later and only if the engagement needs it. That is enough for a fixed number of days and a fixed price within 24 hours.

## Related pages

- [Software consultant or developer?](https://samuelmarndi.com/blog/software-consultant-vs-developer/)
- [Custom software](https://samuelmarndi.com/services/custom-software/)
- [IT consulting](https://samuelmarndi.com/services/it-consulting/)
- [Web consultant in Bangalore](https://samuelmarndi.com/services/web-consultant-in-bangalore/)
- [Red flags when hiring a developer](https://samuelmarndi.com/blog/red-flags-hiring-a-developer/)


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*Published by [Samuel Marndi](https://samuelmarndi.com), independent IT consultant, Bengaluru, India.
Source page: https://samuelmarndi.com/services/software-consultant-in-bangalore/
Enquiries: +91 82803 20550 (phone and WhatsApp) · samuelmarandi6@gmail.com · Mon–Sat, 9am–7pm IST
Quotes are written and itemised, issued within 24 hours.*