Skip to content
Idea Atlas
Sign in

FeedWise

As described:StopNarrowed:Narrow

No as described. Go small, as an India business-day API, with a day-45 kill test.

fintech & lending · ~$58 a month per customer · last reviewed (next review by 29 Dec 2026) · 20 cited sources

Save
Share

Start this week

  1. Tell me your hours per week, whether you're based in India, and who could cover weekends and festival days when a holiday notice lands.
  2. List 40 target firms (NBFCs with in-house tech, lending platforms, payment aggregators, brokers, payroll SaaS). Book 10 calls with the people who own the debit-date or settlement logic. Ask: "Where does your holiday calendar come from, and when did it last break?"
  3. Build the 2026 and 2027 calendar for all 34 RBI centres plus NSE, BSE and MCX by hand, with a source link on every date. Time how long it takes. That's your cost of goods and your demo.
  4. Put up a one-page site with a free JSON download for 2026, a ₹1,999 design-partner offer, and a public changelog.

Checkpoints and kill gates

Decide in advance what counts as on track. Missing a checkpoint means changing the buyer or the offer, not adding features.

  1. Day 45 (kill test)

    ~15 hrs/week

    4 paying design partners at ₹1,999

    Full-time

    5 paying design partners

    If you miss it

    Try one other segment (brokers and wealth apps instead of lenders). Missing again means stop. The market has told you the free sources are good enough.

  2. Day 90

    ~15 hrs/week

    10 paying, ~$300 MRR

    Full-time

    15 paying, ~$500 MRR

    If you miss it

    Cut to the single most-used endpoint (usually next-business-day for RBI centres).

  3. Month 6

    ~15 hrs/week

    $800 MRR, churn ≤3%/mo, zero missed changes

    Full-time

    $1.5k MRR, churn ≤3%/mo, zero missed changes

    If you miss it

    Pivot A: brokers and settlement calendars only. Pivot B: USD plan for global firms with Indian operations.

  4. Month 12

    ~15 hrs/week

    $1.5k MRR

    Full-time

    $3k MRR, ≥30% of signups from the open-source package

    If you miss it

    Stop adding coverage. Fix onboarding and the sales list.

  5. Month 18

    ~15 hrs/week

    $2.2k MRR

    Full-time

    $4k MRR

    If you miss it

    Put all effort into the single best segment. Decide on cut-off times.

  6. Month 24

    ~15 hrs/week

    $3k+ MRR

    Full-time

    $5k+ MRR ($10k is the stretch)

    If you miss it

    At ≥$2k with churn ≤2.5%: keep running it and extend. Below $1k: stop, or sell the code, dataset and customer list.

Do

  1. 1.Sell one job: "is this a business day for this centre, rail or exchange, and what's the next one?" Endpoints: is-business-day, next/previous, add-business-days, and the list for a date range.

    Target: Every visitor gets it in one line

    Why: The list is free. The arithmetic across 34 RBI centres, 2nd and 4th Saturdays, and exchange settlement calendars is what engineers get wrong.

  2. 2.Own the data nobody publishes machine-readably: RBI Negotiable Instruments Act holidays for all 34 centres, RTGS holidays, account-closing days, NSE/BSE/MCX trading and settlement holidays. State public holidays come second.

    Target: 100% of 2026–27 dates carry a source link to RBI, the exchange or a state gazette

    Why: RBI publishes an HTML matrix only. python-holidays covers India's states but not RBI bank holidays. That's the gap.

  3. 3.Sell freshness, not the list. Webhook and email alert within 4 hours of any change, plus a status on every date: tentative, confirmed, changed, cancelled.

    Target: Median time from official notice to webhook ≤4 hours. Zero missed changes in a quarter.

    Why: Holidays move at short notice (Ram Mandir day, 22 Jan 2024; RBI keeping banks open on Eid, 31 Mar 2025). A copied spreadsheet can't tell you that.

  4. 4.Keep an "as known on" history. Store every version of every date, and let customers query what the API said on any past day.

    Target: History live at launch

    Why: Lenders get asked why a debit ran on a given day. "Here's what the official calendar said that morning, with the source" is an audit answer.

  5. 5.Get paid before building. Offer 5 design partners a hand-run version: a weekly-checked JSON file plus WhatsApp/email alerts on every change, for ₹1,999 a month.

    Target: 5 paying by day 45, 15 by day 90

    Why: It tests the real competitor: an intern copying the RBI page once a year.

  6. 6.Automate the watching, keep a human on the publishing. Scrape RBI press releases, the RBI holiday matrix, NSE/BSE/MCX circulars and state gazette feeds every 30 minutes. Diff them, alert yourself, and publish only after a human check.

    Target: Checking routine ≤30 min a day on average

    Why: Full automation will one day publish a wrong date. Full manual work doesn't fit ~15 hrs/week.

  7. 7.Price for B2B, in rupees, with a USD plan. Free: current year, national dates plus 3 centres, 1,000 calls. Developer ₹1,999, Business ₹4,999, Enterprise ₹14,999 a month. Global $149. Annual = 2 months free.

    Target: Blended ARPA ≥$55. ≥40% of revenue on annual plans by month 12.

    Why: Low price buys high churn (ChartMogul: 6.1% a month below $25 ARPA). The free tier is for developers to test, not to run production.

  8. 8.Publish a free, open-source yearly dataset and SDK (Python, Node, Java) with the confirmed calendar for the current year. The paid API sells the live changes, history and SLA.

    Target: 300 GitHub stars and 50 free API keys by month 6

    Why: IPinfo grew from Stack Overflow answers that pointed to a free tool. For developers today, the equivalent is a package they install.

  9. 9.Sell to regulated buyers first: NBFC and bank tech teams, lending platforms, payment aggregators, brokers. Seed-stage fintechs second.

    Target: ≥60% of MRR from RBI- or SEBI-regulated firms by month 12

    Why: Regulated firms don't vanish, face audits, and pay invoices. Startup customers die and take their MRR with them.

  10. 10.Automate operations from day 1: self-serve keys, usage alerts, a public status page, a public changelog of every date change, email-only support with a 1-business-day promise.

    Target: Support under 1 hr a week per 25 customers

    Why: It keeps the product workable at ~15 hours a week. The changelog is also your best marketing.

  11. 11.Add bank cut-off and settlement windows only after $3k MRR: RTGS/NEFT timings, NACH presentation windows, T+1 settlement dates by segment.

    Target: Second product line live by month 15

    Why: It's the natural upsell, and it's still "business-day logic". It is not a new dataset.

  12. 12.Write terms that say "informational, verify with RBI", with a liability cap equal to 12 months' fees. Carry professional indemnity insurance once Enterprise customers sign.

    Target: Terms live at launch

    Why: A missed holiday can cost a lender real money. Your contract has to say who carries that risk.

Avoid

  1. 1.IP geolocation

    Why: IPinfo and MaxMind have a decade of data and probe networks, and free tiers exist. You can't match their accuracy alone. IPinfo won by being early (2014), not by being small.

  2. 2.Exchange rates

    Why: ECB and RBI reference rates are free. Open Exchange Rates sells at $12, $47 and $97 a month, and ExchangeRate-API at $10 and $30. The data is identical everywhere, so price is the only lever.

  3. 3.Global public holidays

    Why: python-holidays is free (MIT licence) and covers 250 countries with subdivisions. Nager.Date is free for 210. Holiday API sells 3,680 states for $399 a year, and Calendarific starts at $12 a month. The price ceiling is near zero.

  4. 4.Indian company (MCA) or GST data

    Why: Scraped MCA wrappers sell on Apify from $2.50 per 1,000 records. Tofler, Probe42 and funded KYC vendors (Signzy, Surepass, Perfios/Karza) already serve it. Government master data is free on data.gov.in. GST search at scale needs a GSP licence. Portal scraping carries terms-of-service risk.

  5. 5.Global financial market calendars

    Why: Copp Clark (since 1841) and TradingHours.com (1,200+ markets, $50–150 a month for status APIs) own it. Breadth is their moat, and a solo founder can't match it. Compete on India depth only.

  6. 6.Address or pincode validation, and VAT validation

    Why: Already rejected in ../docpress/: Royal Mail PAF licence costs, the GetAddress.io ruling, and Stripe checking VAT IDs for free. India Post's pincode data is free too. Use a pincode-to-state lookup as a free helper, never as the product.

  7. 7.Copying another compiler's list (BankBazaar, Bajaj Finserv, Calendarific, Nager)

    Why: Source every date from RBI, the exchanges or a state gazette. A copied error becomes your error, and it's the weakest legal ground.

  8. 8.Selling "compliance" or implying the API replaces RBI's notice

    Why: Say "sourced from RBI notice X, checked at time Y". The customer's contract with their borrower still points to RBI.

  9. 9.Labour-law holiday entitlements (Shops and Establishments Act holidays per state, for payroll)

    Why: Each state's rules differ and change. Getting them wrong is legal advice about wages. Offer state public-holiday dates only, and say so.

  10. 10.District-level or election holidays by constituency in v1

    Why: Thousands of local notices, often in regional languages, with no single source. Cover them only when a paying customer asks for a named district.

  11. 11.A second country before $3k MRR

    Why: Each country is a new rulebook, new sources and new weekend cover.

  12. 12.A generous free tier for production use

    Why: Developers will run production on it for years, as they do on Nager.Date. Free is for the current year and testing only.

  13. 13.Raising money

    Why: Build cost is a few weeks. A $3–5k MRR data business needs no outside capital, and no investor funds India bank holidays.

  14. 14.Adding datasets when a checkpoint fails

    Why: A miss means the wrong buyer or no pain. More datasets mean more upkeep for the same buyer who didn't pay.