Building in public

What we're thinking.
What we're building.

Honest posts about what's working, what isn't, and what we're learning building the payroll layer for Indian SMBs.

Roadmap · Building in Public

What we're building next — and why we're building it in this order

The free payroll tool is live. Here's what comes next: completing the output suite, direct filing, and the API we haven't talked about publicly yet.

Founders - Cohort26 May 1, 2026 4 min read

Founder's Note · Vision

What we're building at cohort26 — and why

India has 63 million small businesses. Almost none of them have payroll that works. Here's what we're building, why we think it matters, and why now.

Founders - Cohort26 April 26, 2026 5 min read

Building in Public

14 days, one pivot, and a free tool we didn't plan to build

A raw commit-by-commit account of everything we shipped from April 12 to April 26 — the bugs, the wrong bets, and what changed when we discovered CAs don't do payroll.

Founders - Cohort26 April 26, 2026 5 min read

We thought CAs were our customer. We were wrong.

We built a payroll tool and spent a week pitching CAs. Nobody was interested. Here's what we learned about who actually processes payroll in Indian SMBs — and why it changes everything about how we go to market.

Founders - Cohort26 April 26, 2026 4 min read