Indian IT founders what's your honest experience with employee monitoring tools? Sharing mine after 7 months (EmpMonitor)

Running a 30-person IT firm in Delhi. This post is specifically for Indian founders and SMB owners because every review I found when evaluating monitoring tools was written for US/UK companies and completely useless for our context.

Why pricing matters more here than you think:
Hubstaff at full pricing for 30 users is a significant monthly spend in INR. Time Doctor similar. EmpMonitor is a fraction of that with 80–85% of the same core functionality. For a bootstrapped Indian IT company not backed by VC money, that delta is real.

What I actually use it for day-to-day:
Not surveillance. I check weekly productivity reports on Mondays, flag anything that looks like a pattern (not a one-off), and use it as prep for one-on-ones — never as evidence in the one-on-one itself. My team knows the tool is running. I told them in an all-hands before deployment, explained exactly what gets tracked, and confirmed that idle time during calls and meetings doesn't count against anyone.

My honest recommendation for Indian SMB owners:
If your team is under 50 people and you're watching costs yes, try it. Give it 60–90 days before judging. The first month the data will just confuse you. By month two you'll start seeing patterns. By month three you'll wonder how you managed without it.

Questions welcome, especially from founders at similar scale.