Build Informed is made by Kartofl Studio, an architecture practice in Mysore run by Vanessa and Lakshman. These are the two documents you agreed to at checkout, in full.
Build Informed is an educational guide. It is written by practising architects who work on residential projects in India, and it reflects our honest experience, our best current knowledge, and our genuine intent to help you navigate the home-building process more confidently.
It is not professional advice for your specific project.
That distinction matters, and we want to be clear about it.
The information, guidance, checklists, calculators, and tools in Build Informed are designed to help you understand the home-building process in general terms: the questions to ask, the mistakes to watch for, the decisions that matter most and when they matter.
All of it is written in good faith. All of it reflects what we believe to be accurate and useful at the time of writing.
None of it is a substitute for the advice of the qualified professionals on your specific project: your architect, structural engineer, property lawyer, financial advisor, and contractor. They know your site, your soil, your municipality, your budget, and your brief. We do not.
It is not legal advice. Nothing in this material should be treated as legal guidance on property transactions, title, zoning, taxation, or any other matter with legal consequences. Please engage a qualified property lawyer for all legal decisions.
It is not structural or engineering advice. All structural decisions for your home must be made by a licensed structural engineer who has reviewed your specific drawings, your soil report, and your site conditions. The information in this material on structural topics is educational background only.
It is not financial or investment advice. Cost estimates, market observations, and financial guidance in this material are illustrative. They are not a substitute for a detailed project budget prepared with your architect and quantity surveyor, or for advice from a qualified financial advisor on loans, investments, or tax.
It is not a specification. No material, product, contractor, or vendor mentioned in this guide is an endorsement. Product availability, pricing, and performance vary significantly by location, time, and project conditions.
All cost figures, rate ranges, and estimates in this material are indicative. They are based on conditions in Karnataka and parts of urban India as understood at the time of writing.
Construction costs, material prices, professional fees, government charges, and market conditions change over time and vary significantly between cities, between sites, and between projects. The numbers in this material are starting points for your own research and conversation with professionals, not fixed references to quote to a contractor.
Treat all cost figures as approximations requiring independent verification.
Building regulations, zoning rules, approval processes, setback requirements, FAR calculations, and government procedures vary by state, by municipality, and over time. What applies in Bengaluru may not apply in Mysore. What applied last year may have changed.
Always verify regulatory requirements with your architect and with the relevant local authority before making any decision that depends on them.
This guide contains views, preferences, and positions held by us as practising architects. On topics like materials, construction methods, designer choices, and design philosophy, we have taken positions where we believe they are useful to the reader.
These are our opinions, informed by our experience. Reasonable professionals in our field may hold different views, and your specific context may make a different approach appropriate. Where we have expressed a view, we have tried to say so clearly. Where we have stated a fact, we have tried to verify it. If we have got something wrong, we would genuinely like to know.
To the fullest extent permitted by applicable law, Kartofl Studio, its partners, employees, and associated professionals accept no liability for any loss, damage, cost, delay, or consequence (financial, structural, legal, or otherwise) arising from decisions made on the basis of information contained in this material.
You are responsible for verifying all information relevant to your project with appropriately qualified professionals before acting on it. The decision to build, and all decisions within that project, remain yours.
We have written this guide because we believe that a better-informed client builds a better home, and because the information asymmetry in Indian construction causes real harm to real families every year. Our intent is to close that gap, not to replace the professionals you will need alongside this material.
Use this guide to ask better questions. Hire good people to answer them.
Vanessa & Lakshman
Kartofl Studio · Mysore
Build Informed · Disclaimer · Kartofl Studio · Mysore · Updated June 2026
Before you access Build Informed, please read these terms. They are short, written in plain language, and exist to protect both you and us.
Build Informed is designed for individual homebuilders, people planning, designing, or executing the construction of their own home or homes. Your purchase gives you a personal licence to use this material for your own residential construction projects.
You can use it for your own projects. Your purchase covers use across all your own personal home-building projects. If you build one home now and another in ten years, you can use this material for both.
You can share it with people directly involved in your construction. If your spouse, partner, or co-owner is working on the project with you, they can read and use this material as part of your joint project. If a family member (parent, sibling, or adult child) is directly and actively involved in the decision-making or execution of your specific home project, you may share access with them for that purpose.
"Directly involved" means they are making or influencing decisions on your project, attending site, reviewing drawings, contributing to the brief, or managing the process with you. It does not mean they are building their own home separately and would find this useful.
You cannot share it beyond your own project team. Extended family members, friends, colleagues, or anyone else building their own home separately cannot use your copy. Each household building a home should purchase their own access.
You cannot distribute it. You cannot forward, upload, post, or share this material, in whole or in part, on any platform, group, forum, or channel, whether public or private. This includes WhatsApp groups, Google Drive links shared beyond your project team, Telegram channels, email forwards to people outside your project, or any other form of distribution.
You cannot reproduce it. You cannot copy sections of this material into other documents, publications, courses, or products, with or without attribution, without written permission from Kartofl Studio.
You cannot resell it or use it commercially. This material is licensed for your personal residential use only. It cannot be used as the basis of a consulting service, workshop, course, or any commercial offering.
You cannot use it on behalf of others. If you are a professional (architect, contractor, broker, or consultant) you cannot use this material as part of your own professional service offering to clients without a separate agreement with Kartofl Studio.
All content in Build Informed, the text, frameworks, checklists, tools, calculators, and structure, is the intellectual property of Kartofl Studio. Your purchase grants you a personal licence to use this material. It does not transfer ownership of any part of it.
If your purchase includes downloadable files, you may save local copies for your personal use. You may not upload them to shared cloud folders accessible to people outside your project team, and you may not store them in any system or platform where they could be accessed by, forwarded to, or used by anyone outside your immediate project team.
We update Build Informed periodically to reflect changes in costs, regulations, and best practice. We will make updated versions available to purchasers where possible. We reserve the right to modify these terms, and will notify purchasers of material changes.
If you believe someone is using or distributing Build Informed without authorisation, we would genuinely like to know. You can reach us at our studio address. We take this seriously, not because we are litigious, but because unauthorised distribution directly affects our ability to maintain, improve, and keep Build Informed available at a price that is accessible.
If you find yourself unsure whether a particular use is permitted, the simplest test is: is this person using my copy instead of purchasing their own? If yes, it is not permitted.
You bought this for your home. Use it for your home. Share it with the people working on your home with you. Don't share it with anyone building a different home, don't post it anywhere, and don't copy it into anything else. That's the whole thing.
At checkout you confirmed that:
● You had read and understood these Terms of Use and the Disclaimer.
● You are purchasing Build Informed for your own personal home-building project, or projects.
● You will not share, distribute, reproduce, or use this material in any way not permitted by these terms.
● You understand that the content is educational and not a substitute for professional advice on your specific project.
Build Informed · Terms of Use · Kartofl Studio · Mysore · Updated June 2026
For questions about licensing, permitted use, or anything else:
write to the studio.