Two-week footfall counts at a shortlisted shop site before the franchisee signs
TL;DR Sitecount measures how many people actually walk past a shortlisted shop site, by hour and day, for two weeks before anyone signs a lease. It adds catchment data and nearby competitors, then gives a clear go or no-go. Franchise brands expanding into smaller cities pay per site, or their franchisees do.
Indian retail growth has moved to the high street. Main streets took 67.9% of retail leasing in Q3 2026, and food and beverage took 19.2% of all retail leasing[1]. High-street rents rose 6.8% in a year[1], so a wrong site costs more every year.
Most site decisions in smaller cities still rest on a broker's word and a few visits at convenient hours. A franchisee who puts their savings into a bad site finds out in month four, after the fit-out money is long gone.
We found no public figure on how many franchise outlets in India close within their first year.
Sitecount places small, camera-free counters at the shortlisted frontage. These are infrared beam or radar units that count passers-by and walk-ins without recording faces, which keeps personal data out of the system and limits duties under the DPDP Act[4]. They run for 14 days, covering weekdays, weekends and the evening peak. A field person also does short manual counts of who's passing - office staff, students, families. The report pulls all this together with catchment data and a map of competitors, and compares the site with one of the brand's existing stores that's doing well.
The seed pitched AI that predicts foot traffic. We reframed it. US tools rely on large mobile-location panels covering millions of places[2], and no comparable public panel exists for Indian tier-2 and tier-3 high streets. Measuring the actual site is slower but honest, and over time those measurements become the training data a prediction model would need anyway.
Franchise brands in QSR, cafés, salons, pharmacies and fitness pay when they want to protect their network. Some will pass the fee to franchisees as part of approval. Individual franchisees and landlords marketing a site are smaller buyers. We found no public price for site footfall studies in India. Our assumption is ₹40,000–1,00,000 per site, with discounts for brands that commit to a batch of sites.
Brands are opening across smaller cities faster than their expansion teams can visit sites. Location-data firms are starting to cover India, and one location-analytics provider lists India among its markets and names a fitness franchise using it to approve new sites faster[3]. Counting hardware is now cheap enough to ship to a site for two weeks.
Nobody publishes a figure for site-selection spending in India. The nearest signals are leasing shares, with high streets at 67.9% of Q3 2026 retail leasing and F&B at 19.2%[1].
The neighbour is in the US, where the leading foot-traffic data firm says it has 4,000+ customers for foot-traffic data[2]. That shows brands will pay for location evidence once it exists.
Location-analytics firms sell location intelligence and advisory in India[3], built on demographic and visitation data rather than counts on the ground at a given shopfront. US foot-traffic data platforms are the benchmark[2]. Big brands' own expansion teams and property brokers do informal counts.
The gap is a fast, standard, measured check for one shortlisted site in a city the brand's team rarely visits.
| Difficulty | Moderate (42/100) |
| Starting capital | ₹35–70 L |
| Time to launch | 4–6 months |
The counting is simple. Running it isn't - getting shop owners to let you mount units, moving kits between cities, and getting field staff to show up on Sunday evenings. Proving that your go or no-go calls were right takes a year of tracking stores after they open.
No licence is needed to count people walking past a shop. A few registrations still apply.
Building this outside India? The categories above usually have a local equivalent, so check with your own regulator.
Don't let a model make the final go or no-go call on a lease. Small-city footfall data is thin, so a person should own that decision.
Want to work out the AI layer for Sitecount? Talk to Yash →
Here's what can go south -
I think this suits a founder from a franchise brand's expansion team or a retail-analytics background who can run field operations. If you want a pure data product from day one then it's a poor fit.
Prove one thing first - that one brand will pay for 20 site checks and share sales from the stores that open.
Plan for roughly ₹35–70 L, mostly for counters, field staff and the first few franchise pilots.
No sector licence. Counters with wireless modules need WPC type approval, and avoiding cameras keeps DPDP duties light.
Yes, franchise brands everywhere need site checks. Check local rules on radio equipment, privacy and mounting on shop fronts.
The free Sitecount validation kit has the line-by-line capital breakdown, the effort scoring, the data-protection and installation checklist, a 14-day validation sprint with pass/fail targets, a 90-day launch plan, 10 interview questions for franchise brands and franchisees, and 5 assumptions to test. Download the kit →
Thinking about building Sitecount or something close to it? The make-or-break work is showing, store by store, that your counts predicted which sites made money, and I'm happy to help you set that up. 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.