SplitEase

The problem

Splitting expenses in an Indian household is not the problem Splitwise was built to solve. Rent is one line. Groceries another. But the real volume is the rest of the ledger: the cook was paid half in advance last Tuesday, the driver took Wednesday off, the plumber still has two thousand pending from last month.

Existing apps treat these as optional notes. For most households they are the arithmetic.

What we built

SplitEase is a native mobile app that makes staff and advances first-class citizens of the household ledger, not attachments to it. The reconciliation engine handles advance recovery, partial payments, and attendance — the parts other apps hand-wave over. A shared view keeps the household on the same ledger without anyone needing to be the accountant.

We designed and built the whole thing in-house: product, UX, iOS and Android apps, sync service, and the backend.

How we approached it

We started with a two-week paid discovery: interviews with eight households, a scoped problem doc, and a lo-fi prototype. The prototype killed two features we thought were core and surfaced one we hadn't considered (half-day attendance). We kept the scope tight and shipped the first public beta in ten weeks from the first line of code.

Offline-first sync came in early — a significant engineering investment for a consumer app, but the places where money actually changes hands don't always have signal.

Scope of work

Product strategy · UX research · Visual design · React Native app (iOS + Android) · Node + Postgres backend · Offline-first sync engine · Hindi + English localisation · Attendance system with half-day support · Advance recovery logic · Settlement summaries · PDF export · Biometric lock · App Store + Play Store launches

The outcome

In beta since Q4 2025 with a growing waitlist. The app gets opened an average of 4.2 times per day per household — well above the norm for a finance tool. The feature we nearly cut (half-day attendance) is the most-used interaction in the app.

Engagement details

Timeline: 10 weeks to public beta, ongoing iteration since. Team: 3 (design, mobile, backend). Stack: React Native, Expo, Node, Postgres. This was an in-house Kaivon product, built top-to-bottom by the studio.