Built in India, designed globally: faster MVPs, lower costs, human support
When I typed a simple prompt into Launch.today, "Build me a Star Wars database of Force wielders," I didn't expect much more than a toy demo. A few minutes later, I had a working website with a list of six iconic Force users. Each entry opened into a neat profile: lightsaber color, species, homeworld, mentors, apprentices, even their fate - alive or deceased. The images were placeholders, but the framework was functional, scalable, and ready to be improved.
It was the kind of experiment that showed the platform's promise. If I could build a Star Wars encyclopedia in minutes, what could a non-technical founder do with an idea for a real-world product?
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A different kind of AI builder
That's exactly the gap Launch.today's founder, Prakash Sanker, wanted to bridge.
"If you are somebody who's non-technical, who does not have access to a developer, and you want to build your own website, you can come to Launch," he told me when I interviewed him. "You can type in a natural language prompt, and you can get that website."
The spark came from personal experience. Despite being technical himself, Sanker saw friends around him struggling to launch businesses because hiring developers was either unaffordable or unreliable. "Finding a developer that was trustworthy was also very difficult," he said. "So I knew I could build something they would try, and they did. From there, we just kept going."
The no-code and AI-builder space is crowded, but Launch.today isn't just another template generator.
Most platforms stop at the UI, offering glossy mockups that fall apart when founders need to scale. Launch.today goes further, it generates actual full-stack code, complete with backend, database, and integrations like Stripe payments and Google Auth.
"Our first point of differentiation is that we make all of this happen all-in-one in the same box," Sanker explained. "The second is that we offer human support. With a lot of AI app builders, when you get into trouble, it's very difficult to talk to a human being. We have support plans so that people are supported, so they don't get stuck in an AI error loop."
And then there's ownership. Unlike many platforms that lock users into proprietary systems, Launch.today gives complete code access. "At the end of the day, as a user, you want to own your own IP," Sanker said. "This gives you the peace of mind that if you're seeing traction, you can hire your own dev team and continue working on the product."
Under the hood
Behind the scenes, Launch.today relies on a mix of AI models. Prompts are sent to Claude, with support from LLaMA models. The generated code files are then compiled in CodeSandbox, and the apps themselves are built using React.js for the frontend and Node.js for the backend.
An AI Autofix system helps smoothen the bumps. Some bugs are fixed automatically with static analysis, while others are sent back to the AI for patching. The emphasis, according to Sanker, is on reliability and scalability. "We've made smart design choices to make sure scalability is not compromised," he said.
Though proudly built in India, Launch.today's ambitions are global. The advantages of building locally are clear: a deep talent pool, lower development costs, and a large base of early adopters willing to test and give feedback.
But the focus is worldwide. "Our focus is primarily to be a global product," Sanker emphasized. "We're not focusing on any one country."
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Already, Launch.today has attracted non-technical founders, product managers, and developers who want to skip repetitive setup work. Its beta went live in April-May, with a full release in June. Since then, growth has been steady.
Faster, cheaper, smarter
The numbers are striking. According to Sanker, Launch.today can cut time-to-market by 50-60% and development costs by 40-50%.
He cited the example of a user building a fitness-tracking app: "The cost to build would have been $30,000-$50,000. Instead, with Launch.today, they took a subscription of $25 a month with some extra messages and built the application for $1,000 or $2,000."
For founders, that kind of cost compression can be the difference between an idea dying in a notebook or becoming a live product.
A glimpse of tomorrow
So, what's next? For Sanker, the focus is on speed and accessibility.
"I'm excited about making the product a lot faster," he told me. "We're fast, but we're not fast enough. It still takes a long time to get outputs that are functioning."
The other big challenge is helping users prompt effectively. "Some users are good at prompting, some users are bad at prompting. It's our job to make sure even the bad prompters get good outputs."
Back on my Force-wielder database, I can easily ask it to swapp out placeholder images with fan art and actual images. I scrolled through character stats, and thought about what this meant outside a galaxy far, far away.
For creators, the leap is profound: from struggling with code or burning money on devs, to spinning up functional, scalable products in days. For developers, AI shifts the role from code churn to higher-level thinking - product strategy, design, and innovation.
Sanker sees it the same way: "AI is going to increase developers' productivity a lot. You're going to have fewer developers, but they'll need greater skills. Instead of just churning code, you'll need to step back and ask, "is what I'm building what I should be building right now?"
Launch.today may still be early in its journey, but if my Jedi database was any sign, it's already proving that the future of building isn't about weeks of setup or expensive dev contracts. It's about typing an idea into a box and watching it come to life.
