Built by IIT graduates, this absolutely free company accounting application and software has more than 5.5M MSME people

If the COVID-19 pandemic and the lockdown has taught Indian MSMEs just about anything, it is that electronic, contactless payments are here to continue to be. And this is adopted by the have to have to history and account financial transactions digitally.

Bengaluru-based mostly startup OkCredit’s founders might not have predicted the pandemic again in 2017, but they were ready to location their faith in creating cell-based mostly electronic accounting options for MSMEs.

Often interacting with nearby grocery suppliers, IIT Kanpur graduates Harsh Pokharna, Gaurav Kumar, and Aditya Prasad observed shopkeepers would do most of their accounting on paper. Tallying took extended, the course of action was vulnerable to human error, and the tiny slips of paper could be effortlessly misplaced.

This led them to start OkCredit — a cost-free, digital-centered credit history harmony recording solution for modest business owners — in 2017.

Harsh Pokharna, Co-founder and CEO, OkCredit, suggests:

“We present a very simple and secured digital accounting application for little organization homeowners in 13 regional languages. We also extra a new voice be aware feature for the usefulness of customers to record their transactions.”

Product offerings

OkCredit not long ago released OkShop — an on the net retail outlet for small merchants — who can screen their solutions and offers and access out to clients. It has also designed OkStaff — a employees and payroll management application for larger sized corporations that use a workforce.

Severe says OkCredit’s USP is that its merchandise are easy, safe, and technologically innovative. They run on a basic smartphone and support automate business transactions of suppliers with clients and wholesalers.

“Currently, we are at a pre-profits stage. Our concentrate suitable now is to make MSMEs educated on the simplicity of digital accounting and producing them snug with the technologies and support them develop their business,” he claims.

OkCredit, which has lifted just around $84 million, statements to witness above 3 million daily transactions on the platform. It has 5.5 million lively users and saw transactions worthy of $7.5 billion recorded in October 2020.

“By presenting a self-serving onboarding practical experience, we get and activate end users digitally. The merchandise is basic to use, and the new options that help them to strengthen their cash flows and income help us to keep and have interaction them,” suggests Severe.

Difficulties of fixing for MSMEs

Working with MSME prospects is an uphill fight, and worries are widespread, particularly in the digital bookkeeping sector.

Organizations like OkCredit confront the undertaking of changing customers’ mindsets from classic book-holding habits to undertake technological know-how and electronic platforms.

“There is a minimal engineering literacy charge, which tends to make it difficult for MSMEs to have an understanding of the advantages of these kinds of an application, and most of them have not applied any this sort of apps for company right before,” says Harsh. “There is also diversity in the user base throughout groups, and retailers, as effectively as wholesalers, use OkCredit,” he adds.

He explains his workforce is surmounting these troubles by producing the digital bookkeeping encounter as user-friendly and successful as feasible.

It is an open secret that the important to acquiring MSME customers at scale lies in the simplicity of the item, and OkCredit is not by itself in this video game.

Startups this kind of as Vyapar and KhataBook have made major in-streets in developing basic accounting computer software for modest organizations. Founded players this kind of as Tally, Intuit, and Zoho have also been in the game for some time now, and are all vying for an $85 billion all round opportunity for digitising Indian MSMEs.

Harsh maintains OkCredit is distinguishing itself via its intuitive and protected system, and credit score-monitoring and payment reminder functions.

COVID-19 impact

The timely payment reminder is specifically helpful for MSMEs in the recent scenario, where lenders could be much less ready or are unable to fork out. Even more, in the course of the lockdown before this 12 months, OkCredit noticed retailers stopping and offering their products and companies on credit as they experienced a dip in business enterprise and revenues.

But, as the lockdown was lifted in stages, the enterprise saw merchants throng WhatsApp to generate catalogues and interact with and sell to their clients.

“This quickly became section of the new typical and promoted contactless transactions. Our retention and revival have now grown and surpassed pre-COVID concentrations,” says Severe.

OkCredit now designs to broaden its providers and achieve out to MSMEs across India that could not be aware of these goods and solutions. Severe says this system is in line with OkCredit’s company plan to assist the “real India” benefit from digitisation. He urges much more founders and business owners to clear up for the electronic bookkeeping and payments segment.

“I suggest solution builders to focus on a specific section of a business enterprise category in resolving a issue. They really should start with a single person, and from there, work on methods to resolve the trouble in the most successful way. They need to focus on acquiring to know the user’s persona and get in-depth data about a user’s existence,” he states, including:

“It is critical to recognize that this marketplace is just opening up, and there will be a lot of gamers who solve challenges and go absent. The critical is to have a long time period goal and remedy complications sustainably.”