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Internal Pricing Rationale
mazhali · internal · 15 Jun 2026

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The pricing principle

A small kindergarten is our most expensive customer per child, not our cheapest. Each school — no matter how tiny — costs us a slice of infrastructure, support time, and (if white-labelled) its own app-store and Firebase overhead.

A per-child price that starts low would lose money on exactly the small schools we target (8 children × ₹30 = ₹240/mo doesn’t cover one tenant). Fix: a flat price floor covers the cost of serving one school. Per-child pricing only kicks in once a school is big enough that per-child math beats the floor — and then the per-child rate drops with size.


Cost model

Platform fixed costs (shared across all schools)

Item Est. monthly Notes
Supabase Pro (auth + storage + Postgres) ~₹2,100 $25/mo — confirm plan
Transactional email (Amazon SES) ~₹300 ~₹8.4/1,000 emails. Supabase built-in is rate-limited/test-only
Platform domain (mazhali.com) ~₹85 ~₹1,000/yr
Push notifications (FCM) ₹0 Free
Backups / monitoring / misc ~₹500 confirm
Total platform fixed ~₹3,000/mo Spread across all schools

Per-school share falls as we grow: ₹300/school at 10 schools, ₹150 at 20.

Per-school marginal (shared app)

Item Est. monthly
Photo storage + egress ~₹20–50
Support time ~₹100–300

Cost-to-serve one shared-app school ≈ ₹300–600/mo (dominated by platform share + support; drops toward ₹300 as schools grow).

White-label per-school cost (own-branded app)

Item Cost Notes
Apple Developer Program ~₹700/mo $99/yr
Google Play Console ₹2,000 one-time $25 per developer account
Firebase project (FCM) ₹0 Free Spark plan
Build + setup labour one-time Flutter flavor, store listings, first submission

⚠️ Apple white-label risk (App Store Guideline 4.2.6 / 4.3): Apple may require each business to publish under its own Apple Developer account, not a reseller’s. Decision needed: (a) one Mazhali account — simpler, risks rejection; (b) each school’s own account — more setup, safer. This materially affects white-label setup effort and pricing.

Cost-to-serve a white-label school ≈ ₹1,000–1,300/mo recurring, plus one-time build labour.


Full pricing table (incl. free tier)

Plan Limits Monthly Annual (~17% off)
Free 1 admin, 1 class, 1 teacher — no parents ₹0 ₹0
Nano up to 10 children ₹499/mo ₹4,490/yr (≈₹374/mo, ~25% off)
Growth 11–40 children ₹50/child/mo ~17% off
Standard 41+ children ₹35/child/mo ~17% off

Free → Nano conversion trigger: the moment they want parents to receive reports and communicate.


Add-ons

Add-on Price Cost basis
Your Own App (own icon, name, store listings + ongoing store & Firebase management) ₹20,000 one-time + ₹999/mo on top of base Monthly must exceed ₹700/mo Apple cost. Setup covers Flutter flavor, store listings, first submission
School Homepage (marketing landing page for the kindergarten — about, admissions, contact, photos) ₹8,000–15,000 one-time + optional ₹300/mo managed Static site on Cloudflare/Vercel, domain ~₹1,000/yr. Monthly covers domain renewal + content updates

Sample P&L (does the floor work?)

Assumes ~20 active schools → platform share ≈ ₹150/school. Illustrative.

A — Tiny playschool: 8 children, Nano, annual

Revenue ₹4,490/yr ≈ ₹374/mo
Cost-to-serve platform ₹150 + storage ₹30 + support ₹100 ≈ ₹280/mo
Margin ~₹94/mo (~25%) ✅ profitable even at 8 kids

On monthly billing (₹499/mo): margin ~₹219/mo (~44%). Annual is thinner but still positive.

B — Growing school: 35 children, Growth + Your Own App, monthly

Recurring revenue 35 × ₹50 = ₹1,750 + ₹999 app = ₹2,749/mo
One-time ₹20,000 setup (covers build labour)
Cost-to-serve platform ₹150 + storage ₹80 + Apple ₹700 + support ₹250 ≈ ₹1,180/mo
Margin ~₹1,569/mo (~57%)

Caveat: with only the first 2–3 schools the platform share is high (₹3,000 ÷ 3 = ₹1,000/school) and margins are thin. Margins improve quickly as schools are added.


Sales talking points

For the tiny / hesitant school:

For any school:

For the white-label upsell:


Open items to confirm before quoting a real customer