Practical notes from the engineers who build agents, copilots and AI products.
A fixed-price AI quote should name the workflows in scope, the accuracy and latency thresholds it will be measured against, the first-year running cost, who owns the code and prompts, and an explicit exclusions list. A quote missing any of these is a number, not a commitment.
A production AI product costs roughly ₹17–75 lakh ($26,500–105,000) to build in India in 2026, plus a monthly running cost of ₹1–8 lakh. The build fee is driven by how many workflows you automate, how deep the integrations go and how much autonomy the system is given, not by which model you pick.
AI strategy consulting does not return money directly. Its return is avoided build cost: a $4,250 engagement that removes two of three candidate use cases before funding saves the $26,500 upwards each of those builds would have consumed. Model it as risk reduction, not revenue, and it survives review.
AI strategy consulting costs roughly $3,250 to $10,500, or ₹2,00,000 to ₹6,80,000, for a scoped two-to-four-week engagement. Eazyware's AI Product Strategy work starts at $4,250 or ₹2,80,000. Big-four style programmes run far higher because you are paying for people-weeks rather than a decision.
An AI strategy consulting RFP should include the business problem in numbers, the systems and data the work will touch, the decision you need at the end, named deliverables, acceptance criteria, a fixed fee and date, IP terms and the people who will do the work.
AI strategy consulting takes two to four weeks at Eazyware, or ten working days for a narrower discovery sprint. Four weeks covers several candidate use cases and a roadmap. Anything longer usually means the scope grew, not that the work is harder. Access delays are the commonest cause of slippage.
The hidden costs of AI strategy consulting are rarely in the consultant's invoice. They sit in your own team's time, the integration work the plan implies, inference and evaluation spend once something runs, change management, and the twelve months of care after launch.
AI strategy consulting in India runs from about ₹2,00,000 for a ten-day discovery sprint to ₹2,80,000 and above for a two-to-four-week product strategy engagement. Global consultancies charge several times that for comparable scope, and the gap is rate, not rigour.
Buy AI strategy consulting when the decision is urgent, unfamiliar and one-off. Build the capability in-house when AI decisions will recur monthly and AI sits inside your core product. Most companies need both: bought judgement for the first decision, built judgement for the next fifty.