2025: A Year of Ups, Downs, and Hard Lessons at Rotten Grapes

2025 was a year of extreme ups and downs for us at Rotten Grapes.

Checkout Video of the blog - Here

We started the year with a strong push. We were in conversations with some large, interesting organisations from the West, and things looked promising. But by April, the momentum slowed down. From April till August, it was dry—honestly, really dry.

One thing I am proud of: we have never delayed salaries. Not once.

Then September changed everything.

We had a booth at a GIFTs Summit, and that single event helped us onboard one of the biggest clients Rotten Grapes has ever had. After that, every month felt like an entire year. Our team size grew rapidly, responsibilities multiplied, and the pace became intense—but in a good way.

I originally planned to document these learnings as a video, but I realised this reflection might be useful to a wider audience—students, freelancers, and company owners alike. These are not textbook lessons; these are things 2025 forced me to learn.

Learning #1: Stop Selling Mediocre Work

In the world of AI, it now takes hours, not months, to build a good-looking, fully functional website—something that would have taken weeks or even months in 2023.

And the biggest shift?
Non-technical people know this too.

The era of charging premium prices for repeatable, low-differentiation work is ending fast.

For students

This might sound scary—but it is actually an opportunity. If you learn to use AI tools well while you are still in college, you are effectively learning the most in-demand programming language of 2025: English.

You can start freelancing early. You can price flexibly. And you can win clients that larger companies simply ignore because the ticket size is too small for them.

For company owners

This is the time to rethink your “army.”

Ask yourself honestly:

What tasks truly require a full-time human?
What can be done using AI at a fraction of the cost?

This is not about replacing people blindly—it is about using leverage intelligently.

I strongly recommend this video on how founders should think about AI-driven team decisions

Learning #2: Innovation Is Non-Negotiable

Whenever I attend conferences, I get this uncomfortable feeling that Indian companies, on average, are not innovating enough.

Yes, this is a broad statement and not entirely true—but let’s look at the GIS industry specifically.

We use:

QGIS
GeoServer
PostgreSQL
OpenLayers
PyGeoAPI

Now pause for a second.

How many of these are:

Built in India?
Or even have Indian developers as core contributors?

This realisation hit us hard.

One of the key decisions we made recently is that Rotten Grapes must contribute original, high-quality open-source geospatial tools. Not wrappers. Not clones. Real tools.

We are already building a few, and I will talk about them in future posts and videos.

Like many services companies, we too have been guilty of chasing quick revenue through base projects and avoiding serious R&D. That will change in 2026.

Learning #3: Accounting (and Measurement) Is Everything

You have probably heard this phrase:

“Earning money is easy. Keeping money is hard.”

In services, I would add:

“Getting clients is easy. Planning, measuring, and delivering is hard.”

No matter how strong your team is or what tools you use, if you—as an owner—do not:

Audit individual performance
Track client profitability
Predict revenue realistically

…you will never scale sustainably.

This applies to tech teams too

As a developer myself, I know what happens when we say:

“I’ll write documentation later”
“I’ll add test cases later”

We all know how that story ends.

The meeting problem

I have friends in large firms where everything is a meeting. Every discussion needs one. In most cases, this happens because documentation is missing.

My realisation in 2025 was simple:

We should run our company as if it were a publicly listed firm.

Assume that someone from SEBI can walk in any day and ask for:

Sales performance reports
Delivery metrics
Financial projections
Operational documentation

Now think about this:
If every salesperson submits a monthly document showing:

Number of sales calls
Demos conducted
Renewals closed
Social media impressions generated

What exactly is the meeting for?

These documents alone will tell you:

Who to retain
Who to upskill
Who to let go
Who deserves a raise

Over the last few months, I have created multiple internal document templates—for myself as CEO, for our upcoming Director of Engineering, our COO, and our team members. The goal is simple: reduce chaos, reduce meetings, increase clarity.

What’s Next in 2026

These three pillars—

No mediocre selling
Real innovation
Relentless measurement

will guide everything we do at Rotten Grapes in 2026.

I plan to start sharing monthly and quarterly reviews openly on my YouTube channel—numbers, learnings, failures, and decisions.

If you are building something of your own, I hope this reflection helped you in some way.

We're Hiring for multiple Positions!

Check our all available jobs here

Happy New Year.

—
Krishna Lodha
Founder, Rotten Grapes Pvt. Ltd.