At a time when India has been dragged to digital transactions, Deskera, a cloud-based integrated software firm is bullish on a cashless economy and has lined up a series of business strategies to enable small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) in India to go cashless in 2017.
Shashank Dixit, CEO and founder of Deskera Holdings, said that it will soon launch a e-wallet for SMEs on the same pattern as that of Paytm. However, the founder did not divulge any details about the wallet.
Deskera caters to SMBs through its Software as a Service (Saas) platform, which means an enterprise needs
only an internet connection and a system to put together or organise data, reports, and documents. These documents include book-keeping, or tax filing in ERP, hiring to payroll in HRMS, sales to support in CRM, project performance in project management, production, planning and process scheduling to quality, compliance and inventory control, and manufacturing resource planning.
The Singapore-headquartered Indian firm recently launched quick loan approvals and credit ratings for SMEs. This means that Deskera’s platform will help banks to peek into an SME’s financial transactions, such as invoices, inventory, balance sheet, etc., for informed decisions, as the data will help banks to predict if an enterprise could turn out to be a defaulter.
“We have partnered with five banks in India to provide bank loans to SMEs, and will focus on this more in 2017,”said Dixit. Deskera also claims to be the first cloud-based software provider to offer Goods and Services Tax (GST) ready software suite in India.
The SaaS firm has about 3000 clients globally and has generated revenue of Rs 180 crore in financial year 2015-16. Closer home, the company aims to champion SMEs and penetrate deeper territories of India in 2017. There are reportedly more than 40 million SMEs in India.
“The company has been growing rapidly and our growth has been over 100% year-on-year for the past 3 years. With plans to increase our geographic presence next year by starting operations in Middle East and Africa, and expanding our footprint in India we are expecting to break new ground,” said Dixit.
Deskera has a pan-India presence with its base office in Pune. It expanded to six cities in 2016—Mumbai, Delhi, Ahmedabad, Jaipur, Bangalore, and Hyderabad.
“By end of 2017, we plan to expand to 20 cities in India,” said Dixit. “We are looking at growth in double digits through direct sales and strategic partnerships and alliances,” he added.
Deskera is taking the mobile approach to drive adoption among small businesses. “We make the platform easy for SMEs to use. We have made the platform look like a mobile application, which means your work will be done with taps and clicks. For example, to file and P&L statement, an user has to make a few taps and the job is done,” Dixit explained.
Moreover, the Deskera platform supports more than 12 Indian languages and facilitates automatic translation of the text in the native script.
“Going further, we are going to integrate more Indian languages, not only on the platform but will also integrate it with compliance systems. For instance, GST rules are stated in English, but we have a system to deliver forms and rules in Indian languages to the end user,” elaborated Dixit.
The company has so far raised investments from various venture capital firms such as Softbank, Aris PrimePartners Asset Management, Tembusu Partners and Tikehau Capital.
Source: The Financial Express
