Ask most finance teams to compare renting a laptop at ₹2,999 a month against buying it for ₹75,000 and the arithmetic stops at 25 months: past that, buying looks cheaper. That arithmetic is wrong, because it prices the machine and ignores the fleet.
What the sticker comparison leaves out
- Refresh: purchased fleets age past warranty into their most failure-prone, least secure years precisely when the accounting says 'keep them'.
- Downtime: a failed purchased unit waits on a repair queue; a rented one is swapped under SLA. Multiply your loaded cost per employee-day by realistic failure rates.
- Disposal: certified data destruction and e-waste compliance is a real line item — and a real risk when skipped.
- Capital: money locked in depreciating hardware has an opportunity cost that startups in particular should refuse to pay.
Where buying genuinely wins
Stable headcount, five-year horizons, specialised workstations that rental fleets don't stock, and organisations with mature internal IT that can absorb repair logistics. If that's you, buy — at fleet pricing, with onsite warranty, and with disposal contracted up front.
For everyone else, the honest comparison is total cost of a working seat per month. Run both columns for your real numbers; we'll happily price either side of it.