Launch HN: Swipe (YC S21) – Simple Billing and Accounting for India
41 comments
Congratuations on the launch, Sri Teja.
A couple questions:
How is Swipe different from Bikayi.com (coincidentally by IIIT-H and YCombinator alumnus, just like yourself)?
And how different is Swipe to Khatabook, OKCredit and other such similar solutions? Do they not focus as much on IT (gst/tax) compliance? Where is the catch?
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The landing page has more contact us CTAs than get started, you may want to flip the ratio around?
Also, I believe embedding YouTube video on the homepage might help given trying the product requires sign-up (in addition to linking users to to your YouTube channel for tutorials).
Per my reading, WhatsApp integration is one of the differentiators, but the service lacks a mobile app? That is a strange disconnect. What isn't the landing page telling me about the integrations?
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As someone who knows many small, often home-run businesses, Swipe is definitely onto something, filling a niche that other services won't / don't. It would be interesting to watch Swipe's progress, especially since copycats are on-the-rise given never-seen-before fund raises by Indian VCs. All the best.
A couple questions:
How is Swipe different from Bikayi.com (coincidentally by IIIT-H and YCombinator alumnus, just like yourself)?
And how different is Swipe to Khatabook, OKCredit and other such similar solutions? Do they not focus as much on IT (gst/tax) compliance? Where is the catch?
----
The landing page has more contact us CTAs than get started, you may want to flip the ratio around?
Also, I believe embedding YouTube video on the homepage might help given trying the product requires sign-up (in addition to linking users to to your YouTube channel for tutorials).
Per my reading, WhatsApp integration is one of the differentiators, but the service lacks a mobile app? That is a strange disconnect. What isn't the landing page telling me about the integrations?
----
As someone who knows many small, often home-run businesses, Swipe is definitely onto something, filling a niche that other services won't / don't. It would be interesting to watch Swipe's progress, especially since copycats are on-the-rise given never-seen-before fund raises by Indian VCs. All the best.
We are solving the billing and compliance for businesses, while Bikayi and other online store solutions make it easy to share product catalogue online to the customers. For the businesses having offline/store-front sales and online sales in different apps, it is becoming more complex to consolidate the sales from these different channels.
With the aggressive implementation of GST(Goods and Services Tax, a monthly sales compliance) in India, business owners are spending between 2-7 days per month to organize these sales for tax filings. And even managing the payments is also becoming complex for the businesses as they need to manually check who paid for what transaction.
Apps like Khatabook and OKCredit and not towards the invoicing and GST compliance, but are more used for recording the credit/debit. For micro businesses it might work as most of them don't worry about inventory and tax stuff. We are targeting the small and medium segment and making it easy for them to manage inventory, bills, customers, vendors and taxes at a single place.
We started with Desktop version as most of our initial customers use desktop for billing, and we are comfortable developing web apps. Now, mobile app is in private beta and some of our customers are already testing it. Soon in a week or so we are about to launch the native mobile app on playstore.
Thank you for the suggestions on the landing page, we will be working on them.
With the aggressive implementation of GST(Goods and Services Tax, a monthly sales compliance) in India, business owners are spending between 2-7 days per month to organize these sales for tax filings. And even managing the payments is also becoming complex for the businesses as they need to manually check who paid for what transaction.
Apps like Khatabook and OKCredit and not towards the invoicing and GST compliance, but are more used for recording the credit/debit. For micro businesses it might work as most of them don't worry about inventory and tax stuff. We are targeting the small and medium segment and making it easy for them to manage inventory, bills, customers, vendors and taxes at a single place.
We started with Desktop version as most of our initial customers use desktop for billing, and we are comfortable developing web apps. Now, mobile app is in private beta and some of our customers are already testing it. Soon in a week or so we are about to launch the native mobile app on playstore.
Thank you for the suggestions on the landing page, we will be working on them.
Thanks for your reply. Swipe is then an alternative to Tally, Freshbooks, Zohobooks, ClearTax, Vyapar, Gimbooks et al?
My comparision with Bikyai was prompted by Swipe's support for setting up an online store. And with the well-funded Khatabook (and OKCredit), because they are bound to enter invoicing and tax-compliance market eventually (if they haven't already: https://wap.business-standard.com/article/companies/fintech-...)
My comparision with Bikyai was prompted by Swipe's support for setting up an online store. And with the well-funded Khatabook (and OKCredit), because they are bound to enter invoicing and tax-compliance market eventually (if they haven't already: https://wap.business-standard.com/article/companies/fintech-...)
We are building this product from the business owner/founder's perspective to make it easy to improve business using technology rather than just for accounting purpose. The motivation to just record the transaction is lesser, but to collect payments easily from the customers, at the same time updating the accounts automatically is valuable. We are focussed on that which the other softwares in the industry are missing.
Also at this stage, we are not too much worried about the competition as this is a big market opportunity and we believe it is going to be much more bigger market than today in the coming couple of years. So sooner or later competition exists.
Also at this stage, we are not too much worried about the competition as this is a big market opportunity and we believe it is going to be much more bigger market than today in the coming couple of years. So sooner or later competition exists.
@ignoramous, How do you keep yourself so up to date on everything
Hi, thanks? This is off-topic, but I don't think I am as up-to-date as it might come off. In fact, news.yc remains the only source of content I consume, which also defines my limit. I guess it isn't really a good thing to be spending as much time as I do on news.yc, anyway.
Congrats on the launch!
I experienced ordering medicines over Whatsapp for the first time from the local store in Mumbai a few weeks ago. Discussing order items and them checking drawers was a PITA, so I just called them to get it done. There often is no inventory management system - it's a manual check.
It was easy to tell that the person at the store didn't quite grasp how things worked around online payment, just that they knew how to follow instructions someone had given them.
1. Generate physical invoice manually
2. Send customer a pic of the invoice over Whatsapp to reconfirm order items and total amount
3. Send customer a pic of the physical panel w/ QR code from payment provider over Whatsapp
4. Wait for SMS from bank account confirming amount paid
5. Dispatch order
https://m.imgur.com/sssuU2e
Not quite there in terms of sending UPI "collect requests" or digital invoices, but it works! Receiving a picture of a QR code was a bit odd but you can easily get around that.
This space is definitely exciting, and you can already see the impact digital payments are having on small biz. Good luck, and change the world!
I experienced ordering medicines over Whatsapp for the first time from the local store in Mumbai a few weeks ago. Discussing order items and them checking drawers was a PITA, so I just called them to get it done. There often is no inventory management system - it's a manual check.
It was easy to tell that the person at the store didn't quite grasp how things worked around online payment, just that they knew how to follow instructions someone had given them.
1. Generate physical invoice manually
2. Send customer a pic of the invoice over Whatsapp to reconfirm order items and total amount
3. Send customer a pic of the physical panel w/ QR code from payment provider over Whatsapp
4. Wait for SMS from bank account confirming amount paid
5. Dispatch order
https://m.imgur.com/sssuU2e
Not quite there in terms of sending UPI "collect requests" or digital invoices, but it works! Receiving a picture of a QR code was a bit odd but you can easily get around that.
This space is definitely exciting, and you can already see the impact digital payments are having on small biz. Good luck, and change the world!
Absolutely spot on.
This is the pain point we are addressing.
This is the pain point we are addressing.
Pardon me if I'm not thinking about this in the right way, but how would you hold the store owner accountable for refreshing or updating their catalogue on the app if they don't already use an inventory management system for purchasing and re-stocking? Isn't that a huge shift in behavior?
What normally happens is that availability is a boolean yes/no, and gets set to no when the first person asks for something that's run out. The merchant then sets it back to yes after stock comes in. That's a lot less work than integration ERP systems, and achieves the same result with the collateral damage to a few customers' experiences.
Congrats on the launch!
Having worked on the SMB billing and accounting space for 2 years in India - its a really really tough space to monetise profitably. The market size seems huge from the outside but its a tough nut to crack.
The space is also hyper-competitive now with khatabooks, dukaan etc spending 100s of crores with no revenue.
Its seems like what you are building is a mini-ERP for SMBs in India. If you are touching AP, AR - do you have tally integration? Pretty much every SMBs auditors will ask for it.
All the best!
Having worked on the SMB billing and accounting space for 2 years in India - its a really really tough space to monetise profitably. The market size seems huge from the outside but its a tough nut to crack.
The space is also hyper-competitive now with khatabooks, dukaan etc spending 100s of crores with no revenue.
Its seems like what you are building is a mini-ERP for SMBs in India. If you are touching AP, AR - do you have tally integration? Pretty much every SMBs auditors will ask for it.
All the best!
Thank you.
We do not have any direct integration with Tally but the data can be exported as an excel file.
We are focused on solving the invoicing and payments part for now.
Would love to know more of your insights and experience from the SMB space.
We do not have any direct integration with Tally but the data can be exported as an excel file.
We are focused on solving the invoicing and payments part for now.
Would love to know more of your insights and experience from the SMB space.
cool. I am a professional working in this field for so many years now. We currently use a host of softwares, basically all the big ones in the market, from tally to marg to busy. then we have online ones like zoho and margbooks to name a few.
I have tried to look at khatabook et al myself but they look more into like AP/AR recording first. They do not have inventory features, no eway billing to name a few.
I would like this to work, if nothing but to have better competition in the market. my clients send me "sales and purchases" every month via whatsapp which are excel files that i have to spend 20 minutes everytime because there is ".00" in the taxable figures tab and tax rates are mixed up so i need to sanitize them.
How are you planning to be better than the incumbent players and are you willing to collaborate because i tried with quickbooks last time and they have essentially left the market. I lost clientele because of the sub par experience i was banking on.
How are you planning to be better than the incumbent players and are you willing to collaborate because i tried with quickbooks last time and they have essentially left the market. I lost clientele because of the sub par experience i was banking on.
Thanks. For sure. Please send me a Hi on [email protected] and we can take it up from there.
just pinged you. looking forward to talking to you
Congrats on your launch team swipe! I think we already have a great payment infrastructure in the BHIM UPI and bill management like this is definitely the next step. Am I correct to understand that you provide a QR code for payment through any UPI app of my choice, similar to what Bharat Pay does, and the bill is sent to the number linked to that?
Thank you. Yes, we are using the UPI apps like BHIM, Google Pay, Phone Pay, PayTM etc.. And also if the merchant wants to collect payments other modes like Debit/Credit cards we are also giving them a payment gateway option as well which allows their customers to pay through any of the payment methods.
Congrats on the launch, and certainly a space that needs better software. However to echo the other comments: what is your revenue plan? Looks like everything is free right now.
I have seen this model used in other large countries like Indonesia whereby the core product is provided free to merchants to juice adoption. This is of course subsidised by the VC funding. But what is the eventual monetisation plan?
Maybe this demographic of "customers" don't think about this, but if the product is free now, and later if you try to charge, what happens if you have lots of churn? And so to avoid that, revenue has to come from other methods, such as maybe selling customer data?
Would be interesting to hear your thoughts on this.
I have seen this model used in other large countries like Indonesia whereby the core product is provided free to merchants to juice adoption. This is of course subsidised by the VC funding. But what is the eventual monetisation plan?
Maybe this demographic of "customers" don't think about this, but if the product is free now, and later if you try to charge, what happens if you have lots of churn? And so to avoid that, revenue has to come from other methods, such as maybe selling customer data?
Would be interesting to hear your thoughts on this.
Thanks so much!
We want to make the mobile version free to use and charge them for web access currently $15 per user per year.
Also there is a transaction charge we collect on the payments made through Swipe. That's another revenue stream.
These are the 2 revenue streams we have on our mind right now :).
We want to make the mobile version free to use and charge them for web access currently $15 per user per year.
Also there is a transaction charge we collect on the payments made through Swipe. That's another revenue stream.
These are the 2 revenue streams we have on our mind right now :).
Best wishes with the launch. I am in constant search for a solution which can work for my father. He is running a large hardware retail/wholesale business single handed in a location not having quality accounting manpower.
Its been a search in futility so far, as there is severe need of user friendliness in the market for complete solutions(my father not that used to computers yet).
Thank you.
Sure we would love to help you with this. Lets connect on whatsapp 7989207832.
Sure we would love to help you with this. Lets connect on whatsapp 7989207832.
What is your business model? How are you planning to generate revenue?
Adding one more question to this list: what about those who don’t use WhatsApp? The website says “share invoices over WhatsApp and email”, which I take as native support or integrations for these modes.
Yes, they can share the bills directly from the platform. For the users who don't use WhatsApp for their business, they can either send emails or we have an option to print/download these bills and give it to their customers.
I should’ve worded my question more comprehensively. Any plans for integrations with other platforms?
WhatsApp is the main form of communication in India, both personal and business.
GP here. I’m located in India and know about the prevalence of WhatsApp. However, I don’t use it and I know many people who don’t use it. Hence the question related to integrations (and wanting to know if other integrations are planned).
You're in a tiny minority then, and it wouldn't hurt startups if a small segment is untargetable. In fact, they shouldn't worry about it for now.
Right, most of our present customers use WhatsApp.
Right now, we have a subscription plan of ~$15 per user per annum for Desktop users and the mobile version is free. We also charge a commission fee on the transactions made through the payment gateway.
My brother is using Vypaar App. How is different from Vypaar app?
Also how much commission fee will you charge?
Also how much commission fee will you charge?
We designed the entire workflows from the perspective of the business owner/founder (someone with 0 accounting knowledge just like us) and that differentiates us from the competition.
Good luck, and a question.
Will you anything like the American Swipe? An acquirer separate from a bank can be big thing there. UPI is there for retail payments, but for everything else...
Will you anything like the American Swipe? An acquirer separate from a bank can be big thing there. UPI is there for retail payments, but for everything else...
Thank you :)
Currently we are focused only on the Indian market.
I would like to know more about what American Swipe is?
Currently we are focused only on the Indian market.
I would like to know more about what American Swipe is?
A payment processor.
Sure will definitely take a look. Thanks!
Bank transfer fees are quite rapacious across the subcontinent, and alternatives to expensive instant wire transfers are rather archaic.
Invoicing people on paper, keeping track of all of it, and having to repeatedly call your account manager on the phone to check arrival of transfers feels so out of this world in 2021.
Invoicing people on paper, keeping track of all of it, and having to repeatedly call your account manager on the phone to check arrival of transfers feels so out of this world in 2021.
We were building software and IoT for industrial automation before we started working on this. We dealt with a lot of invoices, purchase orders and estimates for different customers/vendors on a daily basis. We used to manually make invoices on spreadsheets and store them locally on our computers. Initially, it was working fine but as we got more sales it started to get difficult to manage. On top of that, we had to file monthly tax returns where we would manually consolidate our sales on spreadsheets and send them to our accountant for filing. The whole process is tedious and the existing software available to do it is riddled with accounting jargon and primarily targeted towards professional accountants.
We quickly realized that these efforts were not helping the company and that the time and energy would be better spent on talking to our customers and focusing on our product. Interestingly, we also found out that most of the ~75M SMEs (Small and Medium Enterprises) in India still rely on manual processes in tracking sales, purchasing inventory, cash management, tax filings, and payments—all highly inaccurate and inefficient and a huge opportunity for us to make an impact.
We launched with a simple MVP, with just the Sales module in January and recruited our first few customers. With continuous feedback from our initial customers, we quickly iterated and improved our MVP and started adding Purchases, Estimates, Expenses and Inventory modules. Now we have over 1000 businesses onboarded with us and growing.
Using Swipe, business owners can now create invoices, purchase orders and quotations in a few seconds without any accounting knowledge. Based on their sales, purchases and expenses, we automatically update inventory, payables and receivables and make it easy for them to manage accounting. We also instantly generate those awful monthly tax filings!
Thanks for reading. We would love to hear your thoughts, experiences and the time you spend on accounting and tax filing. We are live on https://getswipe.in. Please share your feedback with us.