AI consulting
An AI consultant for small businesses
and how to pick one
I am one person in Mumbai. There is no team to hand you on to. This page says how I work, what the audit produces, what you own at the end, and what to ask anyone else you are considering.
Most people land here with two questions. Who do I call, and how do I tell a serious builder from somebody selling me a tool. This page answers both, including the parts that count against me.
I am an AI consultant working with small and mid-sized businesses across India, from Mumbai. The work starts with an audit. Nothing is priced or built before I have watched how your office actually runs. It ends with a system running on a computer and on accounts in your name, and with a list of the things I recommend you leave exactly as they are.
One person, start to finish
The person sitting in your audit is the person who writes the code and the person who trains your team. Nothing is passed to a junior you never met.
An audit before a quote
I will not price a build before I have watched the work. The audit gives you a map of how work moves, a build list in order, and a list of things to leave alone. You may stop there.
You own what gets built
The machine, the code, the accounts and the records are in your name. If we stopped working together tomorrow, your systems would carry on running without me.
No monthly software subscription
What I build does not charge you for each person every month. You pay for the build. Care afterwards is quoted on its own and you can stop it.
I use what I sell
My own studio of eighteen people runs its attendance, leave, daily tasks, projects and client records on systems I built. I am the first person who has to live with a bad decision.
I will tell you not to buy
If the honest answer is a sheet, a cheaper tool, or fixing the process before touching it, that is the answer you get. I would rather lose a build than install something that gets switched off.
What an AI consultant should actually do for you
The word covers two very different jobs. One is advice: a view of where AI could help, usually as a document. The other is the build: somebody who connects your systems, writes the code, puts it in front of your staff and stays until it works. I do both, and I price them separately so you can see which one you are paying for.
A buyer gets into trouble when the advice and the build come from different people. The document recommends things nobody has to deliver. I write the recommendation knowing that I am the one who has to make it run in your office.
The audit, and the leave-it-alone list
The audit is time with the people who do the work, not a questionnaire for the owner. I watch how a job really moves, where it stalls, who re-types what, and which record everybody has stopped trusting.
It produces three things: a map of how work moves, a build list in the order it should be built, and a list of what to leave exactly as it is. The last is the one owners remember, because it is usually longer than the build list and it saves more money. Everything on it is work that already runs well, work where judgement matters, or work where the record does not yet exist to read. The audit has its own page if you want the detail before you call.
Questions to ask any AI consultant before you pay
Ask these of me and of anybody else you are considering. The answers separate a builder from a reseller faster than a portfolio does.
- Who writes the code, and will I ever meet that person?
- Does the quote name the machine and the accounts, and whose name are they in?
- What do I pay every month after handover, and what stops if I stop paying?
- Where do our records sit while the system runs, and who else can reach them?
- What will you tell me not to automate?
- If we stopped working together, what keeps running?
- Can I press buttons on something you have already built?
- What would you build first, and why that one?
When one person is the wrong choice
I am not the right answer for everything. A support desk staffed around the clock, a programme that needs twenty people on site at once, staffing or recruitment, accounting work, legal work, or managing your advertising: none of that is what I do, and I will say so on the first call rather than three invoices in.
Where one person wins is a build of the size most Indian small and mid-sized businesses actually need, done by somebody who was in the room when the problem was described. You can see the whole of it, and the systems my own company runs on are the honest test of whether that scale is enough for you.
How the work is quoted
The audit is quoted on its own, as a fixed piece of work, and you can stop after it with everything it produced. A build is quoted as a project once the audit is done, never by the hour, because you should be buying a working system and not my time.
What moves the number: how many systems get connected, how much of your record keeping is on paper today, whether it runs on an outside model or on hardware you buy, and whether you want me looking after it afterwards. The schedule arrives with the quote. What AI costs a small business explains the units other quotes use, so you can compare two of them.
How it runs
- 01
A call, and a plain answer
You tell me what a normal week looks like. If AI is the wrong answer for it, I say so on that call and you have lost nothing.
- 02
Audit
Time with the people doing the work, a map of how it really moves, a build list in order, and the list of things to leave alone.
- 03
Quote and design
A written quote naming what gets built, what it connects to, which machine it runs on and what handover includes. You sign it off before anything is built.
- 04
Build and handover
I build it, run it with one team on real work, train your people in person, and put the machine, the code and the accounts in your name.
Built, not described
Questions people ask
What does an AI consultant actually do?
Two jobs, and you should know which you are buying. The advisory job is working out where AI helps your business and where it will not. The build job is connecting your systems, writing the code and getting your staff using it. I do both, and the audit is where the first turns into the second.
How much does AI consulting cost for a small business in India?
The audit is a fixed piece of work, quoted on its own. A build is quoted as a project after the audit, because the same brief can mean one small system or seven connected ones. No figures here would survive contact with your actual office, which is why the quote follows the audit rather than coming before it.
Should I hire a freelancer, an agency or an AI consultant?
It depends on who has to live with the result. An agency gives you a team and a layer of account management. A freelancer gives you one pair of hands on a defined task. I sit in the middle: one person who does the audit, the build and the handover, which works up to the size of build most small and mid-sized businesses need.
Can one person really build this, or do I need a company?
For the scale most Indian businesses of twenty to a hundred people need, one person is enough, and faster. My own studio of eighteen people runs on systems I built alone. If a project genuinely needs more hands than that, I will tell you during the audit rather than after you have paid.
Do I have to be in Mumbai to work with you?
Yes. I am based in Mumbai and work with clients across India over video calls, WhatsApp and shared links. I travel for the audit and the handover where a project needs me in the room, and the quote says plainly whether it does.
What happens after the project ends, and who maintains it?
The machine, the code, the accounts and the documentation are yours, so your own IT person or vendor can take it from there. If you would rather I kept an eye on it, that is quoted separately and can be stopped at any point without the system stopping.
Do I have to buy hardware to work with you?
Not always. Plenty of builds run on accounts you already have. Hardware comes in when your records must not leave the building, and then the machine is bought in your name and stays in your office. The private AI server page covers that case.
What if the audit says we do not need AI?
Then that is the finding, and you still keep the map of how your work moves and the list of what to fix without software. It happens, and it is a better outcome than a system nobody opens. I would rather be the person who said so than the person who invoiced for it.
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