Per-room power sub-meters and plain bills for small PGs and hostels
TL;DR Splitwatt fits a small radio sub-meter to each room in a paying-guest house or hostel and bills residents for what they use, at the rate the owner pays the discom. Owners pay a monthly fee per room. It works if fair, readable bills end the monthly argument over the shared meter.
In a PG, ten or forty rooms often share one discom meter. Owners recover the bill as a flat charge, by a split nobody can check, or by reading cheap sub-meters by hand. The residents with an AC get subsidised by the ones without, and the owner spends half the month chasing arrears.
Residents usually can't fix this by getting their own meter. In Delhi, one discom gives a separate prepaid tenant connection only to a "separate dwelling unit", which it defines as a room with a kitchen and its own entry, and it allows one meter per dwelling unit[1].
A PG room rarely qualifies. So the owner's own sub-meter is the only real route to billing each room for what it uses.
What it does, in regulatory terms: a billing sub-meter behind the owner's discom meter, used to share the owner's actual bill. Splitwatt does not sell or supply electricity. We found no PG-specific rule on whether owners may add a margin, so Splitwatt bills at the discom's slab rate and the owner should get a state-specific legal view.
An electrician fits a din-rail meter for each room's circuit at the distribution board, plus one on common loads like the kitchen, corridor lights and water pump. Meters report by radio to a small gateway. Each month the app splits the discom bill, so every room pays its own units at the effective rate and common loads are shared per bed. Residents see daily use on a chat app, and owners can switch to prepaid with a low-balance warning.
The seed pitched AI-powered sub-metering. We dropped the AI, because the problem was never prediction. What owners need is a bill both sides trust, at a price a 20-bed PG can afford.
The owner pays a monthly fee per room plus a one-time fitting charge. Our working price is ₹100–200 per room a month, untested. Residents pay their share of the electricity, not the fee. PG management apps are a good channel - one already adds monthly bills to rent for owners with 3 lakh+ rooms[2].
Prepaid billing is normal for residents now, and one vendor reports 92% of residents in a 420-room Bengaluru property recharging digitally[3]. Delhi's discom itself offers prepaid tenant meters with low-balance alarms and emergency credit[1], so residents already get the model. Cheap radio meters make room-level metering doable for small buildings.
We found no public figure for PG or hostel beds in India. The adjacent number - one PG-software firm alone reports 3 lakh+ rooms and 2.3 lakh+ tenants on its software[2].
A vendor case study claims a 60-room Pune co-living property went from 86% to 100% power-bill recovery after prepaid metering[4]. That's the vendor's own claim though, not independent data.
One Indian sub-metering company sells prepaid sub-metering, recharge and resident apps to PGs, hostels and societies, with case studies at 60 and 420 rooms[3][4]. It is the main competitor, and a real one. PG software runs PG operations but shows no metering[2]. Discom tenant meters exist only for dwelling units[1].
The opening is the long tail of 10–40 bed PGs, bought through the apps they already use.
| Difficulty | Moderate (43/100) |
| Starting capital | ₹50–100 L |
| Time to launch | 5–8 months |
The hardware is commodity stuff, but old PG wiring often mixes rooms on one circuit and some buildings need rewiring before metering works at all. Small owners are price-sensitive and scattered, so installs and sales move slowly per room. And you're up against an established vendor.
Splitwatt doesn't sell electricity, so it needs no supply licence, but billing occupants for power has state-level rules.
Building this outside India? The categories above usually have a local equivalent, so check with your own regulator.
AI is not the product here, and the page says so. Never let a model estimate or alter a bill. Every rupee charged must come from the meter reading and the discom tariff.
Want to work out the AI layer for Splitwatt? Talk to Yash →
Here's what can go south -
I'd only build this with a distribution edge, like a partnership with a PG management app or a large PG broker. Without one you're a smaller copy of the incumbent, and I don't like those odds one bit. Prove first that a 20-bed owner pays the fitting charge and that complaints about power bills drop within two months.
Plan for roughly ₹50–100 L, mostly on meters, gateways, fitting crews and early sales.
You don't sell power, so there is no supply licence. You do need WPC approval for radio meters, a check of your discom's rules and a state legal view before charging residents any margin.
Yes, but rules on reselling or recharging electricity differ widely. Check your energy regulator before billing anyone.
The free Splitwatt validation kit has the line-by-line capital breakdown, the effort scoring, the metering and radio checklist, a 14-day validation sprint with pass/fail targets, a 90-day launch plan, 10 interview questions for PG owners and residents, and 5 assumptions to test. Download the kit →
Thinking about building Splitwatt or something close to it? The make-or-break work is finding a channel that reaches thousands of small PG owners at low cost. If you need a hand with that, 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.