How long does it take to set up, and can we import what we already have?

An afternoon is normal. Import contacts from a spreadsheet or an export from whatever you are using now, create the stages you already describe verbally in standup, and start logging live conversations. There is no configuration project and no onboarding call required. Moving off later is the same operation in reverse, which is worth confirming for yourself in the first week rather than assuming.

What can a startup connect it to on the free plan?

Website forms, email and calendar cover founder-led selling on day one, and anything else can arrive through import. Calling, the WhatsApp inbox and automated sequences sit on the paid plan because they carry running costs from carriers and the messaging platform. There is also an API for pushing product signup events into the CRM, which is usually the first integration a software startup actually wants.

What is a free CRM for startups, and when does a startup need one?

It is a working pipeline plus contact history plus follow-up, at no cost, for a team too small to justify a subscription. The moment to start is earlier than most founders think: not when there is a sales team, but when there are more open conversations than one person can hold in their head. In practice that is around fifteen live deals, which arrives well before the first sales hire does.

Do WhatsApp and calling work inside it?

They are on the paid plan. Indian founders sell on WhatsApp constantly, so this is worth planning for rather than discovering. On the paid plan a business number connects to a shared inbox and threads attach to the account, and the dialer places calls from the record with logging. On the free plan you record that the conversation happened and what was agreed, which keeps the history usable for a first hire.

Is our data safe, and can we raise GST invoices?

Access is role based and exports are permissioned, with deletion available on request. Customer records carry the legal name, GSTIN, billing state and place of supply, so your first proper B2B invoice does not need a scramble for details. GST invoicing itself is part of the paid plan. One local detail worth knowing early: sending promotional SMS from an Indian sender ID requires DLT registration with the telecom operators before anything can go out.

How is this different from the spreadsheet every startup starts with?

A spreadsheet is fine until a second person needs to act on it. It has no next actions, no history of what was said, and no protection against two versions drifting apart. The specific cost for a startup is onboarding: a new rep joining a spreadsheet learns nothing about why a deal stalled, whereas a CRM with conversation history lets them pick up a live negotiation in an afternoon.

What does the paid plan cost when we outgrow free?

It is ₹899/user/month with no minimum seat count, which matters when you are adding one person at a time rather than a team of ten. It adds the dialer, WhatsApp inbox, sequences, AI lead scoring and GST invoicing. Telecom and messaging charges are billed separately by your provider. Because seats are added individually, the cost tracks hiring instead of forcing a jump.

Free CRM for Startups India

Free CRM For Startups India Built for Teams That Sell on WhatsApp and Phone

A free plan available for founder-led selling in Bengaluru, Gurugram, Pune and Hyderabad, with GST-ready customer records and no lock-in on the data you build.

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HelloGrowthCRM free plan for an Indian startup showing a founder-led pipeline, follow-up tasks and a customer record with GSTIN and segment tags

Quick answer

Is HelloGrowthCRM right for Free CRM for Startups India?

Yes. HelloGrowthCRM gives Free CRM for Startups India a single system to capture every lead, automate follow-up across phone, WhatsApp, and email, prioritise leads with AI scoring, and forecast revenue — with calling and messaging built in instead of sold as add-ons. It's built for the problems these teams actually hit — like the founder is the CRM, and the first sales hire spends a month reconstructing context from chat threads and memory — rather than generic sales busywork.

A pipeline a founder can run alone and hand to the first sales hire without rebuilding it, because the stages are yours rather than a template borrowed from a much larger company
Segment tags on every account, so when the customer profile shifts for the third time in a year you can still tell which of the old conversations are worth reopening
GST-ready customer records holding the legal name, GSTIN, billing state and place of supply, which matters the moment your first Indian B2B customer asks for a proper invoice

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What Indian founders mean when they search for a free CRM for startups

The search is rarely about features. It is a founder with twenty live conversations, a product to build, and a growing suspicion that some of those conversations have quietly died. Free means no budget conversation and no commitment before there is evidence the process works.

Founder-led selling has a specific failure mode

The failure is not lost leads, it is lost context. A founder remembers everything until the day they do not, and the first sales hire inherits a set of chat threads instead of a pipeline. Recording conversations against accounts from the start is cheap insurance against a painful month later.

What to look for in the Indian market

Check that customer records can hold a GSTIN, billing state and place of supply, because your first serious domestic B2B customer will ask for a compliant invoice. Check that export is available on the free tier. Check whether product signup events can be pushed in through an API, which is what most Indian software startups want within the first quarter.

Plan for the WhatsApp reality rather than resenting it

Indian buyers reply on WhatsApp faster than on email, including at companies with formal procurement. A free plan will not include a WhatsApp inbox anywhere, because the platform charges per conversation. Treat the free period as the time to prove the pipeline habit, and budget for the messaging layer as a real line item.

How to evaluate it in two weeks

Run live deals through it rather than sample records. After ten working days check whether every open deal has a dated next action, whether a new joiner could read an account and understand where it stands, and whether the whole database exports to a file without asking anyone for permission.

Know your upgrade trigger

Decide in advance what would justify paying. For most Indian startups it is the first sales hire, or the point where the founder is copying conversations from a phone into the CRM by hand. Naming the trigger early keeps the upgrade from becoming an emergency in a quarter when cash is tight.

Free tier and paid tier, plainly

The boundary follows running cost rather than negotiating pressure. Software capability is free, and anything metered by a carrier or a messaging platform is on the paid plan.

Capability	Free plan	Paid plan
Pipeline, accounts and contacts	Yes	Yes
Follow-up tasks and reminders	Yes	Yes
GSTIN and place of supply fields	Yes	Yes
Segment tags and source tracking	Yes	Yes
Full data export	Yes	Yes
Scheduling links	Yes	Yes
WhatsApp shared inbox	No	Yes
Built-in dialer with recording	No	Yes
Email and SMS sequences	No	Yes
AI lead scoring and GST invoicing	No	Yes

Where to go next

Challenges we solve

The problems holding this industry back — and the fix

Every team in this space loses revenue to the same recurring gaps. Here is what they cost you and how HelloGrowthCRM closes each one.

The founder is the CRM, and the first sales hire spends a month reconstructing context from chat threads and memory.

Every conversation, promise and next step is recorded against the account from day one, so onboarding a first rep is reading rather than interviewing the founder for a fortnight.Founder-proof records

The customer profile changes twice in a year and old leads are written off wholesale because nobody can filter them.

Segment tags and source fields let you re-query the old pipeline when the profile shifts, which frequently surfaces a dozen conversations that were early rather than wrong.Segment tagging

Investor updates are assembled by hand from a spreadsheet that three people edit differently.

Pipeline value, stage and close dates live in one place, so a monthly update reports a number the team already agreed on instead of a figure someone reconciled the night before.One pipeline number

Free tools feel like a trap that will hold the data hostage once the startup grows.

Export is available on the free plan, and the free tier is permanent rather than a countdown. Staying is a decision you make on merit at the point you have real volume.Export without paying

What you get

Why teams choose HelloGrowthCRM

AI-powered CRM with the features you need to close more deals.

A pipeline a founder can run alone and hand to the first sales hire without rebuilding it, because the stages are yours rather than a template borrowed from a much larger company

Segment tags on every account, so when the customer profile shifts for the third time in a year you can still tell which of the old conversations are worth reopening

GST-ready customer records holding the legal name, GSTIN, billing state and place of supply, which matters the moment your first Indian B2B customer asks for a proper invoice

Follow-up tasks that show only what is overdue, so a founder splitting the week between product, hiring and fundraising still clears the sales list in ten minutes

Source tracking on every lead, so you learn whether your pipeline is actually coming from founder outbound, an inbound form, a community, or one investor introduction repeated many times

Deal values in rupees with a weekly committed view, which is the number that belongs in an investor update rather than the total of everything that ever entered the pipeline

Multiple contacts per company, because a first enterprise-shaped deal in India involves a champion, a finance approver and someone in procurement who appears late and changes everything

Notes and files against the account, so the pilot scope document and the security questionnaire answers you spent a weekend writing are findable when the next similar buyer asks

Full data export on the free plan, so the pipeline you build in the first year belongs to you and moving is a choice rather than a project

Appointment scheduling with a shareable link, which removes the four message exchange that precedes every demo call across three time zones

Mobile access to the same records, useful for a founder who takes calls between meetings rather than at a desk

An upgrade that switches on calling, the WhatsApp inbox, sequences and AI scoring over your existing data, with nothing re-entered and no migration weekend

Compare HelloGrowthCRM to HubSpot, Salesforce & more

HelloGrowthCRM by the numbers

$12: per user/month list price — $10/user/mo on annual billing, ₹899/user/mo in India
$0: free forever starter plan — no credit card required
14-day: trial included on paid plans
259+: live integrations, from WhatsApp to Tally and QuickBooks
500+: teams worldwide run their pipeline on HelloGrowthCRM

Frequently Asked Questions

Common questions about using HelloGrowthCRM in your industry.

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