Pensieve Labs

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Commercial

How Pensieve is priced, without the prices

Written for the finance director, the chief financial officer and the hospital’s chartered accountant.

There are no numbers on this page. A price is a function of segment, deployment model and value model, and a figure published without those three is a number a buyer anchors on and a competitor undercuts. What is published is the shape, because the shape is what your CFO plans around, what your CA classifies, and what decides whether contracting takes four days or four weeks. The figures live on the Order Form, issued to a named hospital.

Section 1

The two-clock principle

Pure gain-share pricing is structurally hostile to a fast close. It requires the parties to agree a baseline, a measurement methodology, an attribution rule, a verification mechanism and a dispute process beforesignature: each a multi-week negotiation, and none of which a hospital’s CFO will concede quickly to a supplier met last month. A single contingent invoice cannot be raised inside two weeks, cannot be recognised as revenue and cannot be financed.

So the commercial architecture separates the two clocks and never lets them touch.

The cash clock

Fixed, payable in advance

A deployment and activation fee plus a platform fee, invoiced on execution rather than on go-live. Fast, simple, uncontroversial, and approvable in the room by the person who signs. This is what gets money into the bank inside the target window.

Invoiced at stage 5, Contracting & Execution. Cash target: day 6 to 12.

The value clock

Measured and invoiced in arrears

A value share computed on an agreed methodology after a baseline period, on a measurement cycle that runs long after go-live. It is an annexure with its own baseline-setting window, not a precondition of signature.

Measured from stage 11, Steady State & Value Realisation, and invoiced only on acceptance of the value statement.

Signature is never blocked on agreeing the value model. The value-share annexure is signable in more than one state, including “standard meters, accepted as published”. A hospital that wants to argue methodology gets a baseline window after go-live and an automatic fallback if the argument is not concluded. The fixed components must, and do, stand alone as a viable business: if the value share were deleted entirely the arrangement would still work for both parties. That is not conservatism; it is the only structure that survives a disputed measurement.

Section 2

The three-part tariff

ComponentWhen it is paidContingent?What it is for
A: Deployment and activation feeIn advance, on executionNoOne-time. Covers provisioning, configuration, master and tariff setup, migration, integration build, training and cutover. It is the work that happens before the platform is worth anything to you, and it is the component that funds a two-week deployment rather than a six-month one.
B: Platform feeRecurring, in advanceNoThe right to run your hospital on the platform, with the availability commitment, the support escalation matrix, the release stream and the security programme behind it. Priced as a share of the hospital's scale rather than per bed or per user, and set so that it is a viable business on its own.
C: Value shareIn arrears, on acceptanceYesA stated share of verified realised benefit above a threshold, invoiced only after the value realisation statement is accepted. It is upside, not revenue Pensieve depends on, and it is the component your CFO can fund from money the hospital was previously losing.

The Order Form carries the figures for A, B and C, the segment band they were derived from, and the payment schedule. It is issued to a named hospital and it is not published, because a published rate card is a rate card negotiated against rather than a price.

Section 3

How the value share actually works

  • The threshold is the platform fee

    Value share begins only above a threshold set at the annual platform fee. Below it, the share is nil. The sentence that follows from that (the platform earns nothing extra until it has paid for itself) is the whole design, and it is why the model is defensible to a board.

  • A ceiling is required

    The share is capped as a multiple of the annual platform fee, and separately by an aggregate consideration ceiling expressed as a share of the hospital’s gross revenue, claimable by the hospital. The lower prevails. An uncapped share is not a pricing model; it is an option written against your own improvement, and no hospital should sign one.

  • The share tapers as benefit rises

    The marginal rate falls in bands. This is not a concession: at high benefit levels more of the cause is the hospital’s own management, and the pricing should say so.

  • Observed baseline, not reconstructed history

    The baseline is measured in the first weeks of live operation with controls in permissive mode, rather than reconstructed from legacy data nobody trusts. This removes the single biggest cause of pre-signature deadlock.

  • Every meter settles against a number a third party can see

    Bank statements, stock counts, payer remittances, system-enforced approvals. Cash-visible meters only in the standard model: charge capture, consumable and pharmacy billing capture, discount leakage, payer disallowance, cash reconciliation and expiry write-off. Modelled cost avoidance and “time saved” do not fund an invoice and are excluded by name.

  • Meters are rate-normalised

    Pensieve Labs is never paid for your volume growth and never punished for its decline. The measure is applied to activity in the measurement period at normalised rates.

  • No downside sharing, ever

    Zero measured benefit means zero value share and no refund. Downside is offered only as service credits against Pensieve Labs’s own controllable commitments, and those are capped. A supplier that shares your downside is a supplier that will argue about your accounting.

  • The methodology is published, not negotiated

    Attribution is policy rather than a per-deal argument, and the exclusion list is published. There is a value dispute mechanism with a notice, a resolution process and audit rights, and it is a named form rather than a phone call.

The framework itself, Value Measurement & Attribution, is a first-class contractual document rather than a slide, and it is published at the public tier so your finance team can read the methodology before anyone quotes you anything. The computation annexure, the realisation statement and the dispute notice are the instruments that operate it.

Section 4

Two things Pensieve will not do

Price per bed, or per user, in any market

Per-bed pricing puts Pensieveon the incumbent’s price sheet, and it caps revenue at the exact moment a hospital extracts the most value from the platform. It also misdescribes the product: Pensieveis not a licence you buy by the seat, it is the substrate the hospital’s clinical, administrative, financial, pharmacy, inventory, HR and analytics operations run on.

Segment bands are used instead, derived from licensed bed count as stated on the clinical establishment registration or gross annual revenue, whichever puts the hospital in the higher band. Both are objective, both are on a document you already hold, and neither moves when a ward is closed for the month.

Benchmark against HMIS list prices

A comparison table against hospital management software is a positioning error that this price cannot survive, and it is the wrong comparison in any case. Pensieve is not a module suite; it is an operating system for a hospital.

The correct comparison is against your hospital’s current total operating inefficiency: the charges that are never captured, the consumables that are never billed, the discounts nobody approved, the payer disallowances nobody appealed, the cash that never reconciled and the stock that expired on the shelf. If that number is small, Pensieve Labs is the wrong purchase and will say so at qualification rather than at renewal.

Section 5

The chartered accountant is the documented gate

In a 50 to 200-bed Indian hospital the chartered accountant is the real veto, and the veto is almost never about price. It is about classification, vendor identity and the CA’s own signature on the audit. It typically costs a deal between one and three weeks, and every day of it is avoidable, because every question the CA asks has a documented answer that can be sent before it is asked.

What the CA blocks onPensieve Labs’s position, stated in advanceThe artefact
Vendor existence and identityBefore releasing a payment the CA will ask for the certificate of incorporation with the CIN, the PAN, the GST registration certificate, the Udyam registration certificate, a cancelled cheque or bank letter, and address proof. Pensieve Labs issues those as a single vendor compliance pack to a named client on request, rather than publishing its own statutory certificates to the open internet: publishing a company's PAN, GST certificate and cancelled cheque is an invitation to fraud, not a transparency measure. Issuing the pack in one bundle rather than in six emails is worth more days than any other item on this page.
GST, and whether it is recoverableIt is largely not. Healthcare services supplied by a clinical establishment are exempt, and because the hospital's outputs are exempt it cannot claim input tax credit on software. The GST on a platform invoice is therefore an absorbed cost for most hospitals in this segment rather than a wash. Pensieve quotes and presents GST-inclusive totals in every proposal and names the line item explicitly as not creditable. A CA who discovers an unadvertised tax at invoice stage sends the file back, and that costs a week.
TDS: which section, at what rateThe classification argument between the technical-services rate and the professional-fees rate is worth several percentage points of Pensieve's working capital, and ambiguity costs days and sometimes a short-payment dispute. Pensieve publishes its view of the correct section and rate with the invoice narration pre-worded to match, splits the invoice by service accounting code so the deductor can apply the right rate line by line, and supplies the non-specified-person declaration and any lower or nil withholding certificate obtained. Withholding does not change the price; it changes when Pensieve sees the cash, which is why the position is stated rather than argued.
MSME status and payment termsEdsol Edtech Pvt. Ltd. is registered as a micro enterprise. Two statutory consequences follow, and both are the buyer's, not the supplier's. Under section 15 of the MSMED Act 2006 payment is due within the agreed period and in no case beyond forty-five days, and any contractual term beyond that is void to that extent. Under the income-tax disallowance for late payments to micro and small enterprises, an amount unpaid beyond that limit is deductible only in the year it is actually paid. Pensieve attaches the Udyam registration to every invoice with the statutory footer. This is not a threat: it is the CA's own problem, and once he sees the certificate he will push finance to pay inside the window without any prompting.
Invoice format, e-invoicing and the IRNWhether an invoice reference number applies depends on aggregate annual turnover against the notified threshold, and some finance teams will ask for an IRN regardless. Pensieve publishes its applicability position so the question is closed in one reply, issues a GST tax invoice in the statutory format, and supports the international invoice formats each market requires where the hospital is outside India.
When and how the money actually movesThe deployment and activation fee and the platform fee are invoiced on execution, in advance, against a payment schedule that names each milestone and its date. e-NACH or a standing instruction is offered so a recurring platform fee does not depend on somebody remembering. Ageing is worked through a published dunning ladder rather than by phone calls, ending at the statutory interest demand where it has to. The value share is invoiced only after the value realisation statement is accepted, never before.

Section 6

The commercial paper

The framework documents are public. The instruments that carry a specific hospital’s figures sit in that hospital’s workspace, because they contain another party’s commercial terms. The row still says what each one is, and signing in takes one credential.

Framework and order paper

Value Measurement & Attribution Framework
ADD-GL-019ContractGL1234NDA31 July 2026

Accept the mutual NDA to request access to this tier. Your acceptance is recorded at once and protects both sides; an administrator then grants access, with a target of four business hours.Accept the mutual NDAWait: target 4 business hours

Pilot / Proof-of-Value Agreement
ADD-GL-013ContractIN1234NDACritical path31 July 2026

Accept the mutual NDA to request access to this tier. Your acceptance is recorded at once and protects both sides; an administrator then grants access, with a target of four business hours.Accept the mutual NDAWait: target 4 business hours

Finance instruments

Proforma Invoice
FIN-IN-001FinanceIN1234ClientCritical path31 July 2026

This belongs to a specific hospital's workspace. Sign in with your workspace credential to read it.Sign in to your workspaceWait: target 4 business hours

Billing questions go to info@pensievelabs.org. Commercial terms are settled on the Order Form, and the paper above is what it is built from.

The contract stackWhat each deployment model costs in daysExit and portability