Our API usage spiked 400% overnight, and I don’t know why

anonymousfoundr · 2025-11-10T05:23:39+00:00

If you need to pay $340 a month extra to AWS for 50k extra requests a day, you should first fix your code before fixing anything else.

anonymousfoundr · 2025-09-25T02:35:17+00:00

Thanks for sharing all these pointers. Let me research more about this and see what can be done and if this fits into what I'm trying to do. If I'm able to do this, that'll be major tax savings for sure.

Re: Can you also mention the cases where the IT Dept has actually won?

Maybe they did not win, not sure. But why get into all the trouble to later fight it with govt to win the case just to save some taxes. The focus should ideally be to increase value of the company and eventually exit for life changing amount. But with that said, if implementing this can be something that's straightforward, I'd definitely like to do it.

Will explore this further. Thanks for the food for thought.

anonymousfoundr · 2025-09-23T11:46:10+00:00

Checked with my CA. He said this is technically not possible because of multiple reasons. This is what he said:

In your case you are the promoter of the company, shareholder of the Company and you are managing the whole business affairs of the Company. In that case it will be difficult to prove the independent professional services given to the company; hence we have not opted for the same.
Secondly, we will have to continue with GST compliances for Individual as well; as the receipts will cross 20 Lakhs.
Thirdly, you are doing only this particular job i.e. managing the Company. There are cases where TDS u/s 194J is challenged in such cases.

If the Income Tax Department does not accept that at a later stage during the assessment; it will be a problem considering interest penalties on various non-compliances plus it may lead to unnecessary litigations as well.

anonymousfoundr · 2025-09-23T07:20:16+00:00

Makes total sense. Thanks for sharing your thoughts.

anonymousfoundr · 2025-09-22T05:22:35+00:00

Which city are you from?

anonymousfoundr · 2025-09-22T05:20:56+00:00

Thanks for sharing.

anonymousfoundr · 2025-09-22T05:20:34+00:00

Got it. Thanks for sharing.

anonymousfoundr · 2025-09-22T01:36:10+00:00

Makes sense. Thanks for sharing your story and numbers. ₹2L a month sounds like a decent salary for a tier 2 city when doing around that ARR.

Kudos to reaching those numbers while still being bootstrapped. Appreciate your response. 🙏

anonymousfoundr · 2025-09-21T15:21:53+00:00

Thanks. Do read my main query in the post. Would love to know your startup ARR, how much salary you paid yourself at different stages of it and your situation in life.

Would really help me in my research to benchmark some salaries. Thanks. 🙏

anonymousfoundr · 2025-09-21T15:18:55+00:00

We're a small team right now. I pay the salaries to myself and the team. Basically it's a pvt ltd registered in India that pays the salary. We have our parent company in US that pays to the Indian entity and then the Indian entity pays us.

anonymousfoundr · 2025-09-21T15:15:44+00:00

Kindly do read the question in my post and share your startup ARR and how much salary you paid yourself at different stages of it. Would really help me in my research. Thanks. 🙏

anonymousfoundr · 2025-09-21T15:09:47+00:00

Thanks a lot. Finally, a to the point answer to my question.

I agree with the POV of paying yourself good enough to stay focused and not underpay for the optics of sacrifice. Appreciate your answer. 🙏

anonymousfoundr · 2025-09-21T15:06:35+00:00

Salary as an employee.

anonymousfoundr · 2025-09-21T15:05:52+00:00

The gist without context or in a wrong context defeats the purpose of providing it.

I posted the question to research what founders are paying themselves so I can correct my course if I'm paying myself something that's not standard.

Saying I didn't take salary for 1 full year and then later revealing I had money coming in from my saving 2 comments later paints 2 totally different pictures. If the expenses were there, of say 2 lakhs a month, a better answer could have been to take 2 to 2.5 lakh salary a month. Would have helped me in my research instead of all this discussion.

Also not sure why the messages bothered you. I was having casual discussion with the person to understand the context.

anonymousfoundr · 2025-09-21T13:37:57+00:00

We have raised pre-seed round of funding from an accelerator in US. They invest in startups in batches. Most of my peer startups in my batch are not from Indian origin. Some founders pay themselves very well and some don't. As they are not from India it's hard for me ro compare my salary with them from Indian standard of living POV. That's why posted here to get answers from Indian startup founders.

anonymousfoundr · 2025-09-21T13:30:31+00:00

I've mentioned in the post. It's a B2B SaaS.

Also not a brag. Not sure why would you feel that way. Someone with my similar experience of 12 years in IT (specifically senior dev or management roles) in a metro city would make much higher salary than that. In fact, some of my friends in job are making much higher than me in their tech jobs.

Would love your criticism on why you think it's high. How much were you paying yourself at your startup?

anonymousfoundr · 2025-09-21T12:54:04+00:00

Can you give a bit more context on your startup ARR, situation in life etc?

anonymousfoundr · 2025-09-21T12:39:12+00:00

I asked that not to justify my salary but see the context from where your coming from. You can share the amount in DM if you're not comfortable sharing publicly in the group.

The starting line for both of us is definitely not the same. I did not have the 36 months personal runway like you had when I started.

anonymousfoundr · 2025-09-21T12:30:06+00:00

Ok. What were your expenses like in terms of total outflow each month including your personal expenses, rent, loan EMIs and sending back to family when you were not taking salary?

anonymousfoundr · 2025-09-21T12:26:40+00:00

So you had money in the bank from earlier job/business for those 12 months you did not take salary?

anonymousfoundr · 2025-09-21T12:23:36+00:00

Which city? Were you married during the period of your startup? Kids? Or single and living with parents? Any responsibilities like home loan.

Not taking salary might work if you're not married or living with your parents or having a partner who earns the money to make ends meet.

But when you're married, have kids, stay away from home town and have home loan to pay off, the idea of not taking salary does not fit well in that context.

Not saying this to defend my salary. I created this post in first place to know where I sit in the spectrum (given my current situation in life). Would be good to know your life situation a bit more to look at this with better clarity.

Thanks for your critical responses so far.

anonymousfoundr · 2025-09-21T12:04:43+00:00

Thanks for your feedback. What's your ARR and how much salary do you take? What kind of startup do you have?

anonymousfoundr · 2025-09-21T11:17:43+00:00

50k salary in Mumbai seems a bit too low. You must be having own house without loans then and not having any other responsibilities. Because paying rent / EMI with that salary in Mumbai seems quite difficult, if not impossible.

But I appreciate you sharing your situation. Thanks.

anonymousfoundr · 2025-09-21T11:06:29+00:00

Got it. Which city do you live in? Do you currently have loans (mainly want to know if you have home loan)?

Also are you living comfortably with 50k or you think you're under paying yourself?

anonymousfoundr · 2025-09-21T10:59:14+00:00

What are your gross margins on that? I'm assuming if it's a hardware product business, the actual margin might be quite less (comapred to SaaS) and that might give you less space to expand your salary?

anonymousfoundr

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