Agency retainer contracts with the client's UPI AutoPay set up at signing
TL;DR Retainrun helps small marketing, design and IT agencies sign monthly retainers that collect themselves. The agency picks a plain-language template, the client e-signs it and, in the same sitting, approves a UPI AutoPay or e-mandate for the fee. Agencies pay a monthly subscription so they spend less time chasing money.
Small Indian businesses spend far too much time chasing payment. The government's MSME Samadhaan portal has received 2,56,892 complaints about late dues from micro and small firms[1], and those are only the firms willing to file.
Is court worth it for a ₹40,000 monthly fee? Rarely, because litigants lose about ₹1,746 for each day they attend a hearing[2].
Agencies feel this the most since their work never stops, so a client who stops paying in month four has usually already had month four's work. India also supplies about a third of the world's online freelancers[3], and a good chunk of them grow into small agencies with no finance staff at all.
What it does, in regulatory terms: contract software that hands collection to a licensed payment aggregator. Retainrun never holds client money. Payments run through an RBI-authorised aggregator's mandate product, straight from the client's bank to the agency.
The agency picks a retainer template for social media, SEO, design or IT support, fills in scope, fee, notice period and late-fee terms in plain English and sends it. The client e-stamps and e-signs it, then approves a UPI AutoPay or e-mandate for the fee on the same screen. Each month the invoice goes out and the debit is attempted, and a failed or cancelled mandate triggers the notice clause the client signed.
The seed pitched no-code smart contracts. We dropped that. In India a contract gets its teeth from the Contract Act, signatures and stamp duty, and paying through a blockchain would mean crypto with 30% tax and 1% TDS[4]. A mandate already does the self-executing bit. The client can still revoke it though, so this improves the odds of getting paid and doesn't guarantee it.
The agency owner pays. Our test price is ₹999–2,999 a month, depending on the number of active clients. The client pays nothing extra, apart from aggregator fees the agency already bears on online payments.
Agencies with 5–50 staff and 5–30 retainers are the target. Smaller freelancers are a cheaper second tier.
Recurring rails have grown up. UPI AutoPay has existed since UPI 2.0 in 2018, and the extra-authentication limit for some categories has gone up from ₹15,000 to ₹1 lakh[5]. Payment gateways sell UPI AutoPay, card mandates and e-mandates as a product[6], and e-Stamping now runs in 26 States/UTs through StockHolding[7].
We found no public count of Indian agencies on retainers. The nearest firm signal is behaviour - 2,56,892 delayed-payment cases filed by micro and small firms[1].
An adjacent number is UPI's roughly 20 billion transactions in August 2025[5], so clients already know the payment step. Your pilot has to find out how many retainers a typical agency has and how many of them pay late.
One Indian e-sign platform handles eSign and eStamp for more than 5,000 businesses and offers contract tracking with renewal reminders, but shows no payment collection[8]. Gateway subscription products collect recurring payments but leaves the contract to you[6]. So agencies stitch the two together with spreadsheets and reminders.
The gap is one flow, built for a small agency, where the signed contract, the mandate and the invoice live together.
| Difficulty | Moderate (32/100) |
| Starting capital | ₹35–65 L |
| Time to launch | 4–6 months |
The build uses existing eSign, e-stamp and mandate APIs. The hard parts are templates that a lawyer approves and a client signs without a fight, and selling to agency owners who are used to free tools and rarely buy software in their first few years.
No payments licence is needed, as long as an authorised aggregator moves the money and you never hold it.
Building this outside India? The categories above usually have a local equivalent, so check with your own regulator.
Don't let AI give legal advice on a clause or decide to stop work for a client. A lawyer approves the templates and the owner makes those calls.
Want to work out the AI layer for Retainrun? Talk to Yash →
Here's what can go south -
I think it's worth a go if you've run an agency or sold to them and can ship a narrow product fast. If you want a big market quickly then skip it, because this is niche SaaS and that's fine.
Prove two things first - that half of a pilot group's clients approve a mandate at signing, and that late payments drop within two billing cycles.
Plan for roughly ₹35–65 L over 4–6 months, most of it on product, lawyer-approved templates and selling to agency owners.
Not if an RBI-authorised payment aggregator collects the money. Holding client funds yourself would need RBI authorisation.
Yes, late-paying clients are a problem for agencies everywhere. Swap in local e-signature, recurring payment and stamp duty rules.
The free Retainrun validation kit has the line-by-line capital breakdown, the effort scoring, the payments and stamp-duty checklist, a 14-day validation sprint with pass/fail targets, a 90-day launch plan, 10 interview questions for agency owners, and 5 assumptions to test. Download the kit →
Thinking about building Retainrun or something close to it? The make-or-break question is whether agency clients will approve a mandate on day one, and I'm happy to help you test that. If you need a hand, you know where to find me. Talk to Yash →
For illustration only. Names are fictional and ideas hypothetical; sourced facts are real but may be out of date. Nothing here is legal, financial or professional advice, and Yash Khatri is not personally liable for any use of it. Read the full disclaimer.