The hidden costs we list inside every path
Tools, taxes, platform cuts, and the tax of being your own customer-support team. We try to surface these before you start.
Every income path has visible numbers — "freelance designers earn ₹40k–₹2L/month in India" — and hidden numbers that determine whether you keep any of it.
Inside each Kaarya path we try to surface:
The tooling tax
Adobe CC, Notion Team, a paid Canva tier, GitHub Pro — depending on the path, ₹500–₹4,000/month before you've earned a rupee.
The platform cut
Upwork takes 10%. Razorpay/Stripe take 2–3% per transaction. Etsy takes 6.5%. UrbanCompany skims 20–30% off service-pro earnings. The headline rate is never the take-home rate.
The GST line
Once you cross ₹20L/year (₹10L for special-category states), you're in GST territory. Most paths hit this faster than people expect. Add CA fees of ₹10–₹25k/year.
The customer-support tax
This one's invisible until you're in it. Every freelance gig, every D2C order, every tutoring student adds Slack DMs, refund handling, "just one quick question" voice notes. Budget 4–8 hours a week for this even when revenue is small.
The opportunity cost
The hour you spend on the side hustle is an hour you didn't spend on the day job, on rest, or on the relationship that holds you up. We try to flag paths where this trade-off gets brutal early.
The map you get from us names these wherever we have data. If a number's missing, it's because the AI didn't have a confident source — not because the cost doesn't exist.