Ask what a feasibility study costs and you will get a shrug and a range. That is not entirely evasion — the work genuinely scales with the question — but it makes budgeting impossible for anyone who has not bought one before. Here is the actual shape of the market as of 2026.
The international benchmark
For small-scale projects and startups, published guidance puts feasibility studies at roughly USD 2,000 to USD 10,000. Medium-sized commercial or industrial work runs USD 10,000 to USD 50,000. At an exchange rate near ₹96 to the dollar, that is about ₹1.9 lakh to ₹9.6 lakh at the small end, and ₹9.6 lakh to ₹48 lakh in the middle band.
Those numbers surprise most first-time founders, and they should. They are priced for corporate capital-expenditure decisions, not for someone deciding whether to quit a job.
Why India-specific pricing sits lower
India has a deep consulting market — roughly USD 9.4 billion in 2026 and growing at about 12.7% a year — with three distinct tiers. The global strategy firms and the Big Four price at the top. Below them sits a large bench of Indian-origin research firms, and below that, independents. The same nominal deliverable can differ by an order of magnitude across those tiers, mostly because of who signs the report rather than what is in it.
What actually drives the number
Four things, in descending order of impact:
- Primary versus secondary research. Reading and synthesising existing sources is cheap. Talking to actual buyers is not, because it costs human hours that cannot be compressed.
- Travel. The single biggest step-change. A desk exercise has near-zero marginal cost. Putting a person in a city for three days adds flights, accommodation, local movement and the days themselves — realistically ₹25,000 to ₹40,000 before anyone has written a word.
- Whether the sector has been studied before. A firm that already holds research on your sector is amortising a cost it has paid. One starting cold has to charge you for the whole thing.
- Deliverable depth. A verdict memo, a full report, and a report plus a tested landing page are three different amounts of work.
A rough guide for Indian founders
- ₹10,000 to ₹20,000: desk research against existing sector work. Market sizing, competitor map, a written go or stop. No primary interviews. Days, not weeks.
- ₹30,000 to ₹50,000: the above plus a round of structured buyer interviews. This is the first tier where you learn something the internet does not already know.
- ₹75,000 to ₹1,25,000: adds fieldwork. Someone physically in the market, looking at shelves, talking to channel.
- ₹1,50,000 and above: adds positioning, brand direction and a live demand test rather than only a recommendation.
Two warnings
First, be suspicious of any quote where travel is excluded and billed later. Field costs are predictable; a firm unwilling to fix them is transferring its own estimating risk onto you.
Second, price is a poor proxy for rigour here. What matters is whether every figure in the final document carries a named source and a date. A ₹5 lakh report full of undated, unattributed numbers is worth less than a ₹10,000 one where you can check the workings.
Testing this properly
We run this as a fixed-price service. A desk read with a written verdict starts at ₹10,000 and takes five working days; the full engagement puts one of our people in your target market for three days. See the four validation plans.
Sources: Feasibility study cost guide 2026; Consulting firms in India 2026.
What market validation actually costs in India in 2026