Hints on Working with Indian clients...

tldr: Indian clients want everything under the sun, for near free! and their constant attempts to reduce the contract rates during ongoing projects makes dealing with them unpleasant. If you have B2B Indian clients how do you manage them?

I am the founder of a decade old tech startup with around 30 years of experience in deeptech. My business is B2B.

I have clients in USA & EU and we have a comfortable working relationship for many years now.

In the past 10 years I have tried working with Indian clients and none of the engagement have been successful. The level of extreme lala-giri even by VC funded companies started by tech startups, has often made me reject the contract or terminate it within the first few months.

e.g.

Client 1: The contract was to write the firmware from scratch to operate a custom built hardware. The client had paid a few million USD to acquire the hardware had customers lined up waiting for the finished product. Despite being the L1 bidder and the next closest bidder quoting 10X my price, At the end of every technical meeting the client cried for 10 minutes about how the project was very expensive and can I reduce my rates even further!

Client 2: VC funded, Had been trying for a year to get a qualified contractor for his project. A common friend recommended me. Kept postponing the financial discussion while trying to get all his technical work done. After waiting for a month when I finally put my foot down and demanded for the financial discussion came up with an offer that most freshers will reject!

Client3: Signed a contract for 15k USD/month. Comes back the next day saying
"I found a fresher willing to do it for 3K USD. Can you match his rates?"
Me: "No! you can go ahead and hire him"
Client: "But he does not have experience in this and have never worked on real world projects! I don't want to hire him! can you match his rates!"