Earning potential
Three cases at the allocated strength of twenty seats, a full twelve-month view, the scale path to forty, and an honest account of what could go wrong.
Three cases, one desk
The conservative case assumes you earn no incentive at all for a full year. It is not a likely outcome — it is the floor you should test the decision against.
| Line | Conservative fixed leg only |
Target two of three slabs |
Upside all slabs + bounties |
|---|---|---|---|
| Fixed component — 20 seats × ₹42,000 | ₹8,40,000 | ₹8,40,000 | ₹8,40,000 |
| Variable component | — | ₹2,10,000 | ₹3,00,000 |
| Milestone and referral bounties | — | — | ₹45,000 |
| Gross monthly receipt | ₹8,40,000 | ₹10,50,000 | ₹11,85,000 |
| Payroll — 25 heads on roll | (₹6,38,000) | (₹6,38,000) | (₹6,38,000) |
| Facility, connectivity, licences, admin | (₹1,45,000) | (₹1,45,000) | (₹1,45,000) |
| Net margin per month | ₹57,000 | ₹2,67,000 | ₹4,02,000 |
| Margin on receipts | 6.8% | 25.4% | 33.9% |
The language premium of ₹12,000 a month on four certified seats is excluded from all three cases. Treat it as a small, near-certain addition from day 60.
The first twelve months
A realistic ramp rather than a straight line: a negative first cycle, no incentive while the desk calibrates, and target performance from month five.
| Cycle | Assumption | Net | Cumulative |
|---|---|---|---|
| Month 1 | Six days of billing from a day-25 go-live, against a full month of payroll and overhead | (₹6,20,000) | (₹6,20,000) |
| Month 2 | Full month, no incentive earned yet | ₹57,000 | (₹5,63,000) |
| Month 3 | Slab A earned | ₹1,77,000 | (₹3,86,000) |
| Month 4 | Slabs A and B | ₹2,77,000 | (₹1,09,000) |
| Month 5 | Target case reached | ₹2,67,000 | ₹1,58,000 |
| Months 6–12 | Target case sustained, seven cycles | ₹2,67,000 | ₹20,27,000 |
| Twelve-month operating cash | After absorbing a negative first cycle | ₹20,27,000 | |
Month 1 is heavily negative because you carry a full payroll for twenty-five people against six days of billing. That is exactly what the ₹6,50,000 ramp line in Schedule E exists to fund, and it is the single most under-budgeted item in most partner plans.
The scale path
At day 90, if quality and attrition hold, the allocation opens to forty seats on the same rate card. The economics improve because the management layer does not double.
| Desk size | Gross at target | Running cost | Net per month | Margin |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 15 seats — the floor | ₹7,87,500 | ₹5,84,250 | ₹2,03,250 | 25.8% |
| 20 seats — the allocation | ₹10,50,000 | ₹7,83,000 | ₹2,67,000 | 25.4% |
| 30 seats — after the scale review | ₹15,75,000 | ₹11,00,500 | ₹4,74,500 | 30.1% |
| 40 seats — full allocation | ₹21,00,000 | ₹13,86,000 | ₹7,14,000 | 34.0% |
| Cost to scale from 20 to 40 | ₹1,500 per head certified, plus your own seats and systems. No further onboarding fee. | |||
Margin improves with scale because the compliance officer, the operations manager and most of the fixed facility overhead are already paid for at twenty seats. Every seat added past that carries only its own agent cost, a share of supervision, and ₹2,750 of variable overhead.
What could go wrong
Four risks worth pricing into your decision, and what the contract does about each.
Your hiring cost is higher than ₹22,000
In Bengaluru, Pune or Gurugram, graduate hiring for a documentation desk can run ₹26,000–28,000. At ₹27,000 the 20-seat target case nets ₹1,67,000 rather than ₹2,67,000 — still viable, but the recovery moves to month 11. Run the calculator with your real number before you commit.
Attrition runs above 15%
Every departure costs a certification cycle and puts a seat at risk of failing the 90% logged-hours test. The contract mitigates this with the ₹40,000 quarterly retention bonus and with training days counting as logged hours, but the operational answer is your own: hire 25 for 20 and keep a certified bench.
The client's pipeline slows
The fixed leg is not volume-linked, so ₹8.40 lakh still bills on staffed seats. Slab B is a completion rate, not a file count, so a thin month does not automatically cost you the slab. Volume risk sits with Akontec. What a sustained slowdown could affect is the scale review, which is a growth risk rather than a downside risk.
You miss the slabs for several months
At the conservative case the desk nets ₹57,000 a month — thin, and it would take about nineteen months to recover the deployment. This is the real downside scenario, and it is why the quality framework in Schedule B is worth reading closely before signing rather than after.
Next: whether your floor qualifies
Schedule G lists the eligibility bar in full — entity, operating history, facility, connectivity, security and people — and which items can be closed during onboarding.