Solo Indian dev. Built a Shorts clipper that doesn't butcher Hinglish. Stuck on distribution.

Hi all. Genuinely asking for advice, not promoting.

Background: solo-built a tool over the last few months that takes long videos like podcasts, stand-up comedy, gameplays → 5–10 vertical Shorts with Hinglish subs (Romanised, not Devanagari). Built it because every existing tool — Opus, Vizard, Submagic — completely butchers Hinglish. They were made for English creators.

Tech stack is honestly the easy part — Sarvam AI for transcription, Claude for picking moments, FFmpeg for the rest. Works end-to-end. ₹499 for 15 clips, no subscription, 3 videos free on signup.

The hard part is everything after building it.

My problem:

• I can't compete with Opus on ad spend. I have a limited budget for paid marketing.
• Have some signups, zero paying. Users try free credits, say nice things, ghost.
• I keep going in circles — is the product not 10x better? Is the price wrong? Am I bad at landing pages? Am I targeting the wrong people?

What I'm asking this sub:

1. Indian founders who bootstrapped to first paying customers — what actually worked for you? I keep reading "build in public" and "cold DM creators," but I want to hear what you did, especially in the Indian market context.
2. Creators here — if a tool transcribes your Hindi/Hinglish properly and gives you Shorts in one click, what would make you pay vs just keep using free Opus credits?
3. Is one-time pricing a mistake in this market? Everyone's doing subscriptions but I personally hate them.

Real talk welcome. I'd rather get torn apart now than keep guessing.

Link in first comment (mods, hope this is okay — happy to take it down if it crosses the line).