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Empowering India's SMBs | Rahul Raj @ FloBiz [Pt. 2]
193 Plays3 years ago
India is the second-largest internet market in the world with more than 70 million small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs). But only a fraction of them is utilizing the advantages of digitization.
The Founder Thesis podcast presents to you a two-part series, where Akshay Datt speaks with Rahul Raj, Founder and CEO of FloBiz.
Rahul started his entrepreneurial journey in 2017, a year after graduating from IIT Kharagpur with Koinex, which was India’s fastest crypto exchange.
Later in 2019, he started FloBiz, a Bangalore based neobank start-up that helps small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) across India. Their flagship programme, myBillBook, is a complete GST building and accounting solution designed to assist SMBs by digitizing their billing and accounting operations.
Tune in to this episode to hear Rahul speak about his entrepreneurial journey and how FloBiz is speeding up tech adoption in the SMB segment.
What you must not miss!
- Working Model of Koinex.
- The core idea of FloBiz.
- Customer acquisition strategies.
- Plans for value-added services.
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Transcript
Introduction to Founder Thesis Podcast
00:00:00
Speaker
Before we start today's episode, I want to give a quick shout out to Zencaster, which is a podcaster's best friend. Trust me when I tell you this, Zencaster is like a Shopify for podcasters. It's all you need to get up and running as a podcaster. And the best thing about Zencaster is that you get so much stuff for free. If you are planning to check out the platform, then please show your support for the founder thesis podcast by using this link, zen.ai slash founder thesis.
00:00:27
Speaker
That's zen.ai slash founder thesis. Hi, I'm Rahul, founder and CEO of Flow Biz.
00:00:46
Speaker
Hi, I'm Akshay. Hi, this is Aurob. And you are listening to the Founder Thesis Podcast. We meet some of the most celebrated sort of founders in the country. And we want to learn how to build a unicorn.
The Future of FitTech: Commerce and Engagement
00:01:03
Speaker
The mega trend for the last 20 years could be best summarized by the statement, software is eating the world. We're betting that the mega trend for the next 20 years would be, FitTech is eating software. This essentially means it is much better to monetize user engagement by taking a fee from commerce-related transactions instead of only a subscription fee.
Flowbiz and MyBillbook: Revolutionizing Small Business Fintech
00:01:24
Speaker
For example, if you are building a competitor to the popular accounting software tally, then instead of trying to earn purely by selling a subscription to it,
00:01:33
Speaker
you should leverage it to offer fintech solutions like payments and credit. This is the reason why investors love companies like Flobis, which has raised more than $40 million so far and is the creator of one of the highest rated fintech apps on the app story, MyBillbook. MyBillbook is used by lakhs of small businesses to manage their invoicing and accounting and is endorsed by one of my favourite Bollywood actors, Manoj Bajpai.
00:01:59
Speaker
This is part two of Akshay's conversation with Rahul Raj, the founder of Flowbiz. In the first part, we heard about the crypto exchange that Rahul started soon after completing his BTEC from IIT Kharagpur. And in this part, he talks about building India's leading fintech platform for small businesses, Flowbiz. I want to hear about how Flowbiz came about. Like, how did you think that this is what we should do? How did you identify the problem?
00:02:23
Speaker
One thing that we wanted to ensure was that we need not dismantle all that we have created for the last two years or so, which meant retaining the team, which meant making sure we can repurpose a lot of stuff that has been built. We could leverage a lot of the experience that we have, so that always was running in the back of our minds. What we did was basically lay down the entire India fintech landscape for the first half of 2019.
Challenges and Opportunities in Small Business Digitization
00:02:49
Speaker
We actually had some ground rules in how we identified the opportunity to go after. For the three founders, it was something to the effect of saying that the next opportunity that we go after has to be exciting enough for the three of us that we didn't want to completely commit to each other today. That this is something I will build together with you for the next 10 years. So it had to have that element.
00:03:17
Speaker
We are a very product first, first principle type of team. So that way we wanted to make sure that whatever we do has to have that angle for product. We also came from, you know, the intent to revolutionize the world in your building we exchanged working in the blockchain space. We wanted to make sure that we continue to have the opportunity to create massive technological impact.
00:03:44
Speaker
And given that we were working at the exchange, which interferes with payment processors, banks, looked at regulations, tried to understand and improve existing financial setups into a decentralized world. So your exposure to financial services and fintech industry in general was high. So we had no inclination in the fintech domain also.
00:04:09
Speaker
Clubbing all of this narrowed our focus to laying out the India fintech landscape. One other thing was also that everyone was looking at India as the next market that will offer the largest opportunity. And we understood the Indian customer best. All of us have had envelope ringings come from middle class. No RP will have been seeing a lot of this development in front of our eyes. So this felt natural and comfortable.
00:04:39
Speaker
So when we did that landscaping efforts for about six months in 2019, we looked at a bunch of things, consumers to be from investing to trading to banking to a bunch of things. And ultimately ended up with the small business digitization opportunity because there were recurring themes of pain points that kept on coming up in our research.
Addressing Pain Points and Credit Gaps for SMBs
00:05:06
Speaker
And we would have spoken with close to 1,000 small businesses back then, spoke with bankers and tech consultants, consumed as many reports, both public and private as we could get our hands on.
00:05:19
Speaker
Having all of that info and getting that first-time perspective actually allowed us to really whiteboard properly to say that this is something that we can actually dedicate the next 10 years and this is something that is worth pursuing. This will also have massive technological impact because one of the things that came up in our research was that about
00:05:42
Speaker
Less than 20% of the entire NSME space had any kind of technological adoption or infusion of a tech product. Which is something that anecdotally you and I can agree also because we deal with so many small businesses in our daily lives. So it felt startling.
00:06:00
Speaker
that if you look at the aggregate numbers for the S&P sector, we are talking about more than 50% GDP contribution. We're talking about roughly 44% to 45% import-export activity. We're talking about 40% to 42% formal workforce employment. So nearly one half of the economy is run by these guys. And then there is only less than 20% software adoption in a world that is digital, in a country that has GST and UPR.
00:06:26
Speaker
So it just didn't sit right with us. And we felt there is a massive bite space. Today, now having worked for the and with the small business sector for two and a half years, I can tell you 10 years is less. It will take longer. It will take longer to build for all of the pay points and the needs that the sector has.
00:06:51
Speaker
So I think we took the right coin of moving to Slobus. We were able to... But this is like a very large canvas. You're saying that MSMEs don't adopt software, but software can be for so many things. So what did you...? Yes, absolutely. So this is a fact that less than 20% software adoption was there. But actually, this was not the pain point that people were talking about.
00:07:19
Speaker
People were talking about the biggest main point by far, which was access to capital. Small businesses don't get served with the right credit product. Leave aside right, they don't get served with credit product. Today, we are talking about close to $550 billion worth of credit gap for small businesses with more than 85 nationalized banks and close to 1,000 NVFCs.
00:07:45
Speaker
So if that kind of an infrastructure continues to leave aside and leave behind the room for $550 billion worth of credit gap, I'm pretty sure that this needs a very different angle to solve for this pinpoint. So the angle that we were able to identify was that even though on an aggregate, there are policies and there are frameworks and there are objectives to do SME lending and stuff like that,
00:08:16
Speaker
An individual's non-business unit is not of that much interest, whether that's because of the risk that they bring with them, whether that's because of not being able to identify the right problem that they are going through so that you can give them the right kind of product, or whether that's the fear of not being able to collect all of the debt that gets accumulated and results into NPS.
00:08:39
Speaker
whether that's cost of acquisition for these small merchants. I think there are multiple dimensions to this problem. So we believe that this access to capital problem which pushes small businesses to go to informal capital markets or debt markets or go to informal money lenders and pay two and a half to five times higher interest on getting hold of that same credit product.
00:09:09
Speaker
It's insane because a small business actually puts in their own money and they actually put all of that livelihood at risk to be able to condemn their operations. And then you are forcing them to go and access credit product at five times the interest rate that has possibly been the benchmark and trademark for regulated institutions. We believe that this is the problem of not having streamlined operations.
00:09:38
Speaker
and not having the right data, which is why this misconception and this discomfort for not being able to search them. So, we took the software approach by claiming the historical context of less software adoption and the biggest pain point of access to capital to find that unique proposition that can help both these problem statements. Because today you may say that, you can say this and I agree.
00:10:09
Speaker
In 10 years, will SMBs continue to be pen and paper based? I don't think that is going to be the case. Yeah, even GST is something which forced a lot of SMBs to use software for the first time probably. If it is a decade out, this is going to look vastly different. Then we can play our part in getting that trajectory map down.
00:10:34
Speaker
Because dedicated software and services like this has not been designed for the business owner in the first place. There exists a bouquet of payload services for large companies. And there exists a variety of products for the consumers. A lot of these business owners would fall in the consumer bracket. They are getting access and exposure to personal financial products. But that doesn't seem to exist for the small business setup, per se.
00:11:02
Speaker
This felt like a massive opportunity to us. So, did you want to do like software for free and monetize through leading? Like, was that the... Coming from CoinX's background, revenue is very important to us, to be honest. We understand the value of compromising revenue and profitability, raise external capital to be able to create traction and growth and distribution. We fully well understand that, but
00:11:30
Speaker
We are not the kind of people who would want to leave that aside for the longest time and park it for later to say, all that matters is getting customers. That hasn't been the approach. Yeah, but this is a viable approach that monetize through lending and give software for free. There are a lot of startups who will.
00:11:50
Speaker
I mean, PTM, Mobikway, all of them have this play, basically. Yes, you are right. You are right. And, you know, entrepreneurs are finding their own ways of reaching out to this customer. But if, so one common mistake that people often make regarding the Indian SMBs is that they end up painting them in one color. That's not the approach to go for this market.
00:12:16
Speaker
This is a market of a wide spectrum of customers with very differentiated and nuanced needs. An agar bati manufacturer in Gujarat will have a largely different expectation from software and services compared to a pharmacist in Bihar, for example. They have very different needs. So somebody will have to tailor these products
Product Strategy and Pandemic Lessons for Flowbiz
00:12:45
Speaker
and ensure that the onboarding is such that it feels not like a massive behavior change because it is very hard to do for this audience, but it feels natural and welcome. So this is a very fine line, which returns into the
00:13:04
Speaker
problem of being able to segment the market properly. So what you go after as a product? What is your core value offering? Who do you think is going to be the early adopter batch? All of these things become really important stuff to take care of. To be able to really look at the business objectively and make sure that you are taking the right steps because
00:13:30
Speaker
the pandemic and the small business sector, if not anything else, has taught me, the other co-founders and the entire team two things very, very strongly. One is the feeling of gratitude that makes you feel humble because when other things didn't work, these small businesses came to all of our rescue. The other thing is patience.
00:13:59
Speaker
You have to be patient for things to take their own course of time also, no matter how hard you try for getting a rapid change out. Rapid change can work in consumer trends where there is enough incentive and intent for people to adopt that change on their own because there is so much social pressure, there is so much social example, there are so many people around you doing it. And if it is easy also to the degree where it's something that they can do.
00:14:28
Speaker
But in the small business segment, that's not the case. You have got a variety of complexities. Each business owner conducts their enterprises as per their whims and wishes and as per their understanding. This has a lot of geographical age, language, type of business, nature of business, scale of business differences that really need special attention.
00:14:53
Speaker
So, that way, I think, you know, when we looked at what were those decisions you took, like, you know, who to target, what is the product, how to roll it out, like, tell me about those decisions. Sure. So, you know, the flagship product that we have, at this point, I'll take a quick moment to tell you about the flagship product also. It's called my billbook.
00:15:16
Speaker
Even though at Slobus, we are trying to build a Neobank, and the understanding is that, by far, if the biggest problem statement is access to capital, then you have to solve for that pain point. So definitely at Slobus, we are trying to build a differentiated and a new age banking experience and financial services experience for these SMBs. But our flagship product is called MyBillbook, and the positioning there is pretty straightforward. It is a GST, billing and accounting software.
00:15:45
Speaker
So even though there is going to be a layer of financial services and banking embedded on top of this, it will seem natural. It will not feel that you do this disconnected management of accounting in some place, inventory in some place, transactions in other place, banking in some other place, and compliance in some other place. Which just, you know, all of these components equally critical for a small business to run smoothly and grow at scale.
00:16:11
Speaker
But so much of disconnect and so much of lack of context between these components, it just doesn't make sense to have them in such segregated and disconnected pockets out of or beneath of all context. So essentially, you decided to build
00:16:30
Speaker
something like a QuickBooks or a tally, but for SMB and with a kind of UI-UX that they don't get intimidated by. Absolutely. That's very well called. Because no matter what business we are talking about across the MSME sector, invoicing is a central activity. And this is an activity that is close to the business owner personally also.
00:16:57
Speaker
So, if you look at the process of, let's just say, creating a GSD compliant invoice, you'll need 30 to 50 data points, and it takes 10 to 15 minutes to get it right, especially if you have all the information and calculations handy. Otherwise, you may end up redoing a lot of that information, punching in, and then it produces even more time.
00:17:20
Speaker
On the other hand, if you look at the compliant invoice, it has got your business details, counterparty business details, your 4823 details. They've got transaction and banking details. You've got any other additional terms and conditions that get laid out on the invoice. And particularly, you can imagine a B2B invoice. So a distributor selling to a retailer, for example. Now, the invoice is equally important for both the businesses. So,
00:17:50
Speaker
Invoicing actually automates a lot of the other activities in the business. If you are submitting the invoices properly, the party ledgers are automatically updated automatically. So with one single streamlined activity, a bunch of these things can get automated and can become actually a super tool or a super power for the business owners to have real visibility, to have a better track of their health of the business.
00:18:18
Speaker
to have a much better sense of where their business stands and whatnot. This thing became super important and actually received great love from the SMB customers.
00:18:31
Speaker
We are the highest rated Play Store product in our category. Across more than 90,000 product reviews, we are 4.7. So there isn't a product like ours with a better rating, to be honest with you. This is also a product that was designed not from the accountant's point of view, but from the business owner's point of view.
00:18:51
Speaker
So it actually enables them, and having a mobile-first approach allows the business owner to have a business in the pocket, anywhere, anywhere, and have access where you know you're not just an access of the information, but you can take steps and actions on what you want to do with your business. So what if, let's just say, you are awake in the night or partying at a friend's place, but you remember that you're so vocal to issue the invoice which was supposed to be issued in today's date itself.
00:19:21
Speaker
You can do that from the mobile app itself, just because you remembered it and you're carrying the entire business in your pocket. So it actually is very liberating, you know, because it comes at practically no cost. It comes with no expectation of investment in infrastructure like a desktop or a laptop. It comes with no expectation of, you know, for you to know prior accounting and technical know-how. It doesn't need you to do accounting.
00:19:50
Speaker
and all of this is available in your native town. So, currently we go to Shindi, Gujarati and Tamil and in the next six months or so, we will add five more languages. So, you know, it comes in your native town. So, we were able to supplement the existing behavior and infuse technology that didn't feel out of place.
00:20:16
Speaker
Which is why we received such love and appreciation from the customers. So my real book V1, or the beta, was released in January of 2020. And between January of 2020 and last month, we have received more than 10,000 feature requests. So this is an audience that will tell you what they want if you were listening properly.
00:20:45
Speaker
In most cases, they will not tell you that they want a feature. They will tell you...
Go-To-Market Strategy and User Monetization
00:20:50
Speaker
They will give you examples, try to explain, try to give you scenarios, paint a picture in a real life situation in the business that they are not able to solve with your software or your product. And then you have to reverse engineer that problem statement and crystallize that into a feature that can solve that pin.
00:21:14
Speaker
So because we have a very rewarding journey to work with small businesses, to be honest with you.
00:21:42
Speaker
Tell me about the go-to market. So you finalized on invoicing as your point of entry to SMBs and that invoicing could eventually expand into various other things because then with invoicing, inventory bookkeeping and eventually credit also can be solved because you have that data.
00:22:01
Speaker
How did you go to market with an invoicing product? And you did not want to give it away free, right? You wanted it to be a paid product. So tell me about that, like the go-to-market journey. So as I told you, the beta was released in January of 2020. And last week of March is when the first national lockdown was put in place.
00:22:23
Speaker
So we could not do too much of diversified experimentation on GDN. The best you could do was run ads, which has been the large part of user acquisition for most part of these pandemic years that we have all experienced together.
00:22:43
Speaker
Although without any loss of productivity, we shifted to remote work and stuff like that, instead of getting discouraged that we cannot scale or distribute the product in a variety of experiments or GDM methods,
00:23:00
Speaker
We instead focused on getting the product even deeper and even better. Because as I told you, in February of 2020, the first version was released. Obviously, it was far from complete. And it continues to be incomplete even today. I don't think that our product is ever complete. There is always some of the other things that you think, you know, we need to include, we need to add, modify, create, whatever. So, it continues to be incomplete even today. Although,
00:23:28
Speaker
Today's version is so much more powerful, so much more pang, such better experience on the product. You know, something that takes 10 to 15 minutes to create a GSD compliant invoice on pen and paper. You can do that on my billboard in four clicks and 15 seconds. And that too, in one click, you can share that with the counterparty via WhatsApp directly.
00:23:56
Speaker
So, you know, the GTM, I think, because of the pandemic, a large part of the acquisition actually happened through digital channels. So Google, Facebook, AdSense, stuff like that. Is this like a pull product or a push product? Like, are a lot of people searching for this as a problem? I won't say a lot. Probably definitely, but not a lot. This is technically a push product. Businesses are concerned if you save them money or help them make more money.
00:24:23
Speaker
That is what they would value the most. You cannot go and tell them that here is a product that can save you time. They've got ample time. So that way, I don't think that an implicit value is something that this audience instantly gets.
00:24:43
Speaker
Who is to say that it's going to be the same in two years, three years from now? Okay. And what is the journey of a new user? Like, say, he'll see an ad somewhere, he'll download the app, then what? Like, tell me the journey for the business owner. Yeah, they download the app. It is straightforward. You put in your mobile number, verify it with an OTP. We ask you a few skippable questions, like what industry, what type of business you are in, what city you are in.
00:25:12
Speaker
Do you have a DST and stuff like that? Like do you need pan number and all? You only ask for DST and that too is capable. So, you know, you have to actually consciously do all of that. For example, you could have chosen to keep it as a mandatory field for getting onboarded. But when you are curtling your own opportunity of even DST registered businesses who are there only to try the product before they can make a choice.
00:25:36
Speaker
like to talk a lot about, you know, top of the funnel. So, skippable questions, people can choose to fill in this information and then they are taken to, interesting, interesting story here, when they are taken to a screen where they will be shown a variety of different invoice themes.
00:25:58
Speaker
And these different invoice themes, the first thing that we see, obviously after the splash screen where we explain a couple of features and all that or value propositions of what the product is going to do for them, when they go to the invoice theme preview page,
00:26:14
Speaker
This mimics their existing behavior when they go to a stationery or a print shop to actually purchase a physical pill book. They will show them the templates. They will show them the pink color, green color, green color. They will show them the landscape or portrait and whatnot. They will show them the experience while purchasing a physical pill book also. And then they will show them that when they make a business, they will do a copy, film, copy, print strategy.
00:26:43
Speaker
So they go through that experience of looking through invoice themes, they select one that they like, and then we take them through the journey of creating a sample invoice. So they actually palpably feel that I clicked an item, I clicked a party, and I clicked generate invoice, and then here is a beautiful PDF invoice that is now getting prompted to share via WhatsApp, and I can do this for my business. It is as simple as tapping a few clicks.
00:27:09
Speaker
We take into that journey and then we tell them here is where you can populate your inventory, here is where you can populate your parties, here is where you can populate your business information. And once you have all of these things, you can begin to generate your first professional invoice. And when do you ask them to pay the subscription? So it's a freemium product on mobile for certain types of features. It's free to use, including invoicing. We don't have a limit on usage of the invoicing activity also. We do have limits on, let's just say,
00:27:38
Speaker
the invoice themes that you can put up or value additional features that are part of other modules on the product.
00:27:48
Speaker
for under inventory management. So basically, for my billbook, on my billbook, you will record sales, purchase, expense, paymenting, payment out, delivery, jalan, ebay bill, quotation, estimate, all of those things, and it helps you maintain inventory, keep a track of payables and receivables, and also helps you get close to 25 business reports, including GSTR reports, that come in handy for decision-making and compliance and filings.
00:28:12
Speaker
So there is ample avenue to create differentiated paywalls depending on what people really want on day-to-day basis and what we have to pay for when it comes to accessing certain nuanced features on the product.
00:28:28
Speaker
We have both mobile and desktop. On mobile, we support Android today. iOS is going to be under development. On desktop, we have both the web and the offline desktop app. One of its kind when it comes to supporting real-time data sync between mobile and desktop interfaces because both of these products run offline. So you can create invoices,
00:28:51
Speaker
offline on mobile, you can create invoices offline on desktop. And when both of these products come up, we resolve any conflicts that there are when it comes to sequencing and stuff like that or data population. And then this gets synced to create a consolidated snapshot on both devices. This we support across multiple devices and multiple users. So it's a complicated technological challenge when you have to do it both offline and online without any loss of data consistency.
00:29:19
Speaker
So that's that. And for advanced features, people pay for desktop app, people pay for multi-business, multi-company, multi-user, multi-device, all of these things people pay for certain reports, certain deeper features for settings on inventory or party or whatnot, people pay for value added features like, you know,
00:29:44
Speaker
reading cards, business cards, online store and whatnot, people pay for that. For removal of my billboard branding from invoices and stuff like that, people pay for that. So is your pricing like tiered, like gold, silver, platinum, like that, and each tier gives you access to certain features? It begins from 800 rupees per year to, you know, 3000-4000 rupees per year.
00:30:13
Speaker
which is an annual applicant subscription charge that we have. We recently rolled out a multi-year plan also, so you get discounts if you wait for two years or three years or something like that. A lot of people that we speak with have this question and this intrigue because people believe that it's very hard to make money from software, particularly in the SMB space.
00:30:41
Speaker
We believe that people we pay up if you actually are able to establish value with them and you're able to tell them that this is something of value because this is how it helps you and is an enabler of your growth. So that way we are very confident of being able to even improve the experience and have differentiated pricing, add more value to the
00:31:06
Speaker
to down to the passe that people pay. And I think that is going to be key in how we look at our distribution strategy moving forward once. Okay, okay. So currently, how much of your customer acquisition is through paid ads and how much comes through organic means like it's a referral, basically? Yeah, I understand. Organic can mean a bunch of things. I would say that split would be
00:31:32
Speaker
70, 30, 65, 35 to that order. 65 on which side? 65 on the paid acquisition side. And only let's just say 35 or maybe 70, 30 on the organics. But I think, you know, we need to do a little more work on getting this organ volume up. Got it. Okay. And what is your conversion funnel? Like, you know, how many monthly signups do you have? How many of them become active users? And then how many of them become paid users?
00:32:00
Speaker
I definitely understand where you're coming from, but I will not be able to share these numbers only because how do I put it? Invoicing is something that everybody will need to offer. At some point or the other, invoicing is something whether you are offering an online store or whether you are
00:32:17
Speaker
offering inventory management only or whether you are offering a course or whatnot. At one point or the other, you will have to offer invoicing, which is why this is something that we do very well compared to the overall average of the industry because not many people in fact monetize on SaaS in the first place. Most of the people actually give it away for free. We have stopped looking at numbers for now three quarters.
00:32:45
Speaker
So we stopped looking at top line numbers, which is basically saying downloads. And all that matters to us is the bottle of the entire funnel where people end up paying. And that is how the entire effort is getting optimized internally as well. So, you know, as far as I know, most freemium products have single digit percentage of the paying TL. Is it? It is single digit. It is single digit.
00:33:10
Speaker
And you also have to see that, you know, it's not a SaaS product, per se, it's a SaaS product that we believe, like Slack is a SaaS product. And you and I pay for Slack because you and I are a very different kind of customer altogether. We have very high technology awareness. We are very savvy with tech.
00:33:30
Speaker
I've been talking about somebody that asks their son to check, how do I see if the message that I have sent has been read or no? Or how do we create a new group on WhatsApp? This is the level of literacy in the audience that I'm talking about. So even though you and I can understand that we are a SaaS business and whatnot,
00:33:53
Speaker
It doesn't just translate equally well for the audience. Can you share your, like, how many users do you have or what is the monthly signups you get or how has that grown since you lost it? We have grown about, so basically currently we are at about 1.2 million monthly active businesses. And these monthly active businesses create
00:34:20
Speaker
transactions worth 1.2 billion dollars every month. So, already operating at decent scale, although I will tell you that, you know,
00:34:34
Speaker
We have grown, at least on the active merchant base, we have grown four to four and a half times this year, since January this year. And the idea is to grow five to seven times by the end of 2022. How many do you add monthly, like the monthly new business? We have 1.2 million monthly active businesses right now.
00:34:54
Speaker
there were additions like how many get added or so this is going to get a little nuanced but and this may be particular to our business but imagine that you don't have very high intent which is why I said this is a push product even today
00:35:10
Speaker
Imagine you don't have very high intent and you've downloaded the app, you've tried it also, but then you were not incentivized to switch from your pen and paper. So this app continues to be there out of mind, out of sight, and you are a registered user.
00:35:26
Speaker
But somehow or the other, you come across another ad of my billboard, or some other user nudges you to say, I am my billboard user, and you tried this app. And then this person gets reactivated. So we see a long tail of people that get active, that become highly engaged users, even in a span of three to six months.
00:35:49
Speaker
The number of new users can range just to give you a ballpark, although I don't like this, just to give you a ballpark would be anywhere between 10 to 40,000 per month. And, you know, we want to be able to find newer GDM pathways because now
00:36:12
Speaker
If we don't worry about how many installs we are getting, that's not the amount of meter we track. We are, I think, 6.2 or 63 million downloads, maybe more, as of today. Now, with this kind of a download figure, it doesn't matter if I'm a 10 million download company also, or 10 million download product also.
00:36:32
Speaker
What really matters is how many people actually went on to become highly engaged users, and how many then actually ended up paying for the product because they were able to buy the value. And this is not something that they can't afford, right? Because if you are talking about $800 to $3,000, $4,000 bucks per year price point, this comes to cheaper than a cup of coffee or a cup of tea per day.
00:36:58
Speaker
So, I definitely don't think that it's a point of being able to afford or not. It's more of realizing the value and whether that gets communicated the way intended. What is your internal target that how many of your active users should be paying? Like, let's say in a couple of years, not immediately.
00:37:28
Speaker
We also, you know, while I would say we are optimistically realistic, it cannot be a very large proportion that pays, to be honest. It will be, let's just say, I'll be super happy if half of that entire active merchant ends up paying. But I don't think it will give more than 50% ever.
00:37:52
Speaker
I said 50% is massive. The reason I'm saying that 50% is because I'm looking at a 10-year horizon. They may not be paying delay, but will they continue to not pay even 5 years down the line while they are an active, engaged user? I don't think so. At least, you know, maybe we'll try to get as close as possible to get that number to 50%. But even if we are able to take it to let's say a third, that also will be massive.
00:38:20
Speaker
We are also operating in the belly of the market. We don't cater to the long tail of micro businesses. Let's just say sub 30 lakh, sub 40 lakh type of turnover business. We tend to not cater to them. They are free to use because it's a premium product some people use also. But we don't tend to focus there. We tend to focus on the businesses that are slightly more mature.
00:38:44
Speaker
widely more advanced in their enterprise journey. So they are missing the value better, which is where it is an adjusted return of all the efforts we are putting in. What is the market size of this? You may have some number, like the X number of GST registered companies, which would roughly be your market size, I guess. Yeah. Obviously, only a fraction of that because large companies would also be GST registered, but I could tell you that.
00:39:12
Speaker
There is about 50,000 to 75,000 new GST registered companies come up every month. We believe that this is the only way to accelerate. Government is going to change some benchmarks also for GST, or let's say the expectations of different slabs of compliance for GST. Those three adjustments will definitely happen. But we are talking about roughly a 50 to 20 million merchant base that is going to be an addressable market.
00:39:41
Speaker
This is like with 30 lakh plus annual turnover. And 50 to 20 million or target market or addressable market that I talk about, this is because some of them would not be ready today. They will get ready three years down the line. But in three years, the product talker will look different than what it is today.
00:39:59
Speaker
So, the addressable market may be 50 to 20 million, but that is what the total size of the market that we are after today. It's only a sliver of 20 million that we are heavily focused on, because what's the point of going to a late majority if you haven't been able to capture a large share of the early adopter itself, for example?
00:40:19
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Right now, you're only targeting early adopters. Early adopters, the slivers of early majority in some sections of MSME spectrum, those are the ones we are heavily focused on today. Are you more focused on manufacturing businesses or service businesses? What is the product solved better? Problems of manufacturers?
00:40:43
Speaker
It's actually a product that works for a large variety of businesses. We have been very horizontal so far. So it works for distributors, wholesalers, traders, stockists, manufacturers, services, all of these guys. And that for retailers also. But a larger portion is non-retail. Non-retail means what?
00:41:04
Speaker
So, it's actually a representation of the industry mix also. For example, there are fewer manufacturers, then slightly more distributors, slightly more wholesalers than long retailers. So, that industry mix is going to get represented here also. So, when I say don't retail, this is wholesalers and distributors and traders.
00:41:23
Speaker
A significant portion is manufacturers also, but definitely it proportion to the actual industry mix. There is definitely retailers on the product also, but the product works better for distributors today or non-retail people today. Now there is a rapidly emerging category of services and startups that has begun to be used by people.
00:41:43
Speaker
So, you know, services, it can include retail outlets also where they are serving the offices also. We can include freelancers and gig workers also. All of those also find a massive use of the product. What is your target like same time next year in terms of your ARR? I don't think the target is ARR to be honest. I think the target is how many paid companies? Because what matters to us is that if let's just say I can make a X dollar revenue on SaaS.
00:42:14
Speaker
I can make 10X, 20X dollars on the bouquet of services that can get accompanied with this. We're talking about a high-LTV product, right? We're talking about a billing and accounting product that has low stickiness 10 years because it is not easy to switch between these systems. So if you are able to delight people and get them hooked on to the product, ideally they should stick with you for a very long period of time. If you're continuing to not prove upon the promise of delivery,
00:42:44
Speaker
So that way, the opportunity to monetize via financial services and repeated purchases on these bouquet of value at added services, that will be much more compared to the SaaS review that they pay upfront once a year.
00:42:59
Speaker
So I think it is not so much about getting that revenue out only on SaaS immediately, but this is more about getting that cohort of paid companies as quickly as possible. Those are targets we are choosing. Because if we are trying to do that, then, you know, I think you would naturally, you know, understand this, that if in India people pay for something, they want to utilize the maximum value out of it.
00:43:25
Speaker
So by far the cohort that behaves the closest to the ideal behavior set, using the product on multiple fronts, trying out different modules, making sure that more and more transactions keep on getting recorded, all of that behavior, and we have industry leading retention and engagement numbers also, but that numbers actually are exhibit of the spared user cohort.
00:43:48
Speaker
So if we only optimize for scaling that, we are able to create that large set of user base to which cross-selling and upselling a bunch of these services with confidence is going to be so more feasible. Yeah, essentially, this would become like your prime member, like Amazon has the prime membership, which is a paid membership. But the fact that it's a paid membership helps them to sell more because once you pay for a membership, then you want to utilize it. So you're looking at that kind of a
00:44:18
Speaker
like a FinTech super app kind of a thing where paid members would have a higher propensity to spend on other things because they want to recover more value and they're more engaged. So what is the roadmap in terms of the value-added stuff that you will sell? In what sequence do you want to launch? What all do you want to launch? And in what sequence?
00:44:42
Speaker
So on the SaaS itself, we have a bunch of things identified. There are certain features which are required by a smaller subset of these engaged cohorts, but really important for them. Because imagine shifting your entire business, and then because of only a lack of a couple of features, you're not able to shift entirely. That is excruciating. It's actually pretty irritating.
00:45:07
Speaker
So to get going out of the way, make sure that nearly everything gets sufficed for this audience. That is on the roadmap. There are certain industry specific, or at least nature of business specific type of features that have been identified that we need to build. There are slightly more capabilities when it comes to preparing for scale. So, you know, when more people record, when more people run offline, when more people add more users, all of those things we need to prepare for.
00:45:35
Speaker
There's a consistent parallel work to be done on pricing experiments. So that is our continuing line of activity. So there is a bunch of things on SaaS itself. There are also features that we are going to build. On the FinTech front, I think, you know, payments, collections, visibility of bank accounts or visibility of bank balances, those things have to be.
00:45:58
Speaker
like an API integration with the bank so you can fetch bank transactions and then which will lead to bookkeeping. Do you offer bookkeeping? Yeah, we do offer bookkeeping because you can record sales, purchase expense, payment, need payment, all of that you can do. So that way there is already a bookkeeping product. And return filing also? No, we don't support return filing today because it is not a double entry bookkeeping system like a tally is.
00:46:27
Speaker
What is the difference? And so basically, you create ledgers and there are a bunch of vouchers that you keep on maintaining as credit and debit to make sure that it's always reconciled. On the product that we have, which is not a double entry bookkeeping system, it is basically recording all sales in one place, all purchases in one place, and systems will be able to identify to say, but technically, double entry bookkeeping is a ledger.
00:46:57
Speaker
or you can apply this information to your Jared accountant, and they can consume all of this information to then do bookkeeping in Tally, the way they want to do it, which is required for their activity when it comes to compliance, finding TBS, filing and stuff.
00:47:14
Speaker
So, but it suffices for the actual day-to-day operations of the small enterprise. So that is a conscious choice. It's not that we can't build it, but it's more of a conscious choice. Because the moment you build a double entry bookkeeping system, you are expecting the business owner to know double entry bookkeeping.
Vision for the Future: Neobank Aspirations
00:47:30
Speaker
Only then they will be employed. Which is a typical for accountants. So how can we expect the business owner to use the product that way?
00:47:38
Speaker
But to be able to record transactions, make and collect payments to be able to fetch current accounts. Collect payments and include a link in the invoice for online payments. So customer doesn't need to do bank transfer. He can just do credit card, UPI, etc.
00:47:56
Speaker
Yeah. It's a natural extension, right? You're creating an invoice. My course will collect payment directly through that invoice sharing activity. So, collection of payment, then obviously making payments to your suppliers or your vendors and stuff. Like you could ask your vendors, like, why is your upload code? Something like that.
00:48:19
Speaker
So that is payouts, then obviously, disability and data of current accounts to be fetched in one place with overtime. So what actually happens is that there is a real-life trade that requires a banking transaction. A banking transaction is not why you are in business.
00:48:38
Speaker
you are actually in business, there is a real life trade that happens and then you do a backing transaction to complete and consummate that real life trade. So, will you be able to fetch bank transactions even from like the old school, like obviously ICICI kind of banks will have API integration being offered, but what about say old school bank?
00:49:04
Speaker
like a, you know, public sector bank, which is not so tech savvy. I agree with you completely. And I think it's definitely a challenge worth solving. It's not that it's not doable. This is doable in some of the other format, which is suboptimal today. But over time, it's not going to be the case. Let's just say when account aggregators kick in and there is wider adoption, then maybe this is our no problem. What is account aggregator?
00:49:31
Speaker
Account aggregator is basically a framework that creates two levels of institutions, a financial information provider and a financial information user. And with the consent of the end consumer, you can fetch records of some other financial institution that is required for this consumer to provide, to access the service that you are providing to them. Like a loan company asking for bank statement.
00:49:59
Speaker
Yes, exactly. A loan company asking for a bank statement, and you can give the explicit permission as a consumer that, hey, loan company, take this from my bank and give me the loan. But I don't need to manually download email to you, and then you receive an after application that need not happen. So when these kinds of notebooks get kicked in, then... This is on the horizon, like, is RBA?
00:50:23
Speaker
Account aggregators already went live this year, but I think there is a limited use case and limited participants right now. This can expand and expand very quickly. Yeah, yeah, this would be a game changer, like probably for businesses as big a game changer as UPI I'm guessing, like in terms of the
00:50:43
Speaker
So basically the regulator is thinking about this from the point of view that these regulated institutions are already tasked with the objective of maintaining data sanctity and privacy.
00:50:57
Speaker
Why is the customer experiencing this hurdle over and over again? To get their own records and supply their own records and still it is an inconsistent broken experience for the consumer. So leave aside businesses. Think about you and I. When we are applying for loans, when we are applying for other financial instruments, when we are looking at creating newer accounts for trading and investment and whatnot.
00:51:21
Speaker
When we are working at filing our returns or filing our paper work for several purposes, we are expected to do this ourselves.
00:51:34
Speaker
But if in large part your data is already with trustworthy institutions, why not create a data sharing mechanism that controls the access and time-bound visibility of that data point serves the purpose and then you redirect that information back and maintain that privacy, which is what the entire principle of a count aggregator is like.
00:52:00
Speaker
Time-bound access to your data, get the purpose solved, and then retract that information back. So it gets localized, but still universally accessible.
00:52:11
Speaker
Yeah, this sounds pretty amazing. I hope it comes into full-fledged mode soon. It's already live. And I'm pretty sure it's going to be amazing. It's going to be awesome. But what are the stuff that you want to cross-sell to people? Do you want to sell insurance? What is the roadmap on that cross-selling?
00:52:34
Speaker
This optionality bracket, I think whatever you pick, you will somehow or the other find a relevant use case for that. What we are going to actually do is something that we have done for the last two and a half years on the SaaS front also, is listen to the customer and see the largest fuck of the world's war.
00:52:54
Speaker
and then sequence it out. It's not that we don't have openness to sell a bouquet of financial services, but if legacy of financial service ABC is only required by 2% of my audience, I don't think it would be an effort. Because there are so many more things that, you know, has a core piece of the business would want to own and operate.
00:53:16
Speaker
So, larger profit and revenue pools would be obviously getting a bigger priority. And this is going to warrant so much of innovation as well.
00:53:31
Speaker
How much of a contextualization level can you bring to accessing financial services? So if you are a retailer and I'm a distributor and I'm looking at expanding to a new go down versus you are looking at restocking five products, you and I need very different credit products. You need a line of credit, only the working capital solution. And I need a term loan because I'm looking at a new construction altogether.
00:53:58
Speaker
Will the system be able to identify that this is the need of the customer at this point of time, so give them the right product? If that is possible, then we have practically redefined how financial services get served in the first place.
00:54:10
Speaker
You would obviously not give the funding from your own balance sheet. You'd probably tie up with banks and NVFCs and help them to extend the loan and you would do the underwriting. That could be the approach. If we do underwriting, then obviously we will want to take away a portion of that revenue share because we are taking that underwriting responsibility.
00:54:35
Speaker
And I think, you know, if we are to actually become a Neobank, one time or the other, we will have to cross that boundary where we work with banks only as partners and begin to look at... You become an NBFC yourself. Exactly. What more of a revenue share can be available and accessible for our business as well? Because we seek out the intersection of
00:55:01
Speaker
data, usage behavior, financial health, financial, you know, aptitude and aptitude of the user. We look at real-time needs, real-time sense of where the business stands. And we'll be able to coalesce all of that into a mechanism that can serve financial products at practically zero cost because we have already gotten them onto a product that is digitally accessible.
00:55:28
Speaker
Right, okay. Have you already applied for an NBFC license or you'll do that at all? Not weird. I think there is so much work on SaaS to be done that I think those things are a little out there, maybe a year away. Yeah, maybe like that. Because, you know,
00:55:45
Speaker
The credit gap or the credit opportunity is not something that we slip away. This aspect is that much more important. The one to go to market strongly, the one to go to the right kind of audience properly and in a time-bound manner is going to actually extract the juice of this much quicker and much better other partnerships.
00:56:09
Speaker
So you said you want to be a new bank. Are you also looking to do like opening of bank accounts or is it only from the credit side? Credit obviously is a more obvious one, but if there is
00:56:25
Speaker
possibility and need. I don't think that, you know, this is going to be something that is going to be immediately required because the kind of businesses that we work with, they already have bank accounts. And they already have bank accounts. It's not about giving them a current account just for the sake of giving them a current account.
00:56:41
Speaker
In fact, that is added complexity and hassle for them to maintain another app mode. The promise of being digital first while all of their other network participants already are in the low of the existing bank accounts that this SMB maintains. So, if this is going to be required for newer businesses, let's just say somebody opening up a business for the first time and they need a new current account also, why not?
00:57:07
Speaker
that existing user just because we want to give them a current account, I don't think so. If they begin to ask for a MyBillbook current account because they think it can power and actually take away hassle from their existing operations, then they will not shy away also. So, you know, when you search for MyBillbook, Google gives those suggested results. One of them I saw interestingly was MyBillbook versus Vyapar. And I just thought I'll ask you directly what is the difference.
00:57:37
Speaker
We have come close. We have come close as a product and a competition. They have been around at least two, two and a half years before us in the same sector, in the same segment, offering a similar product. But with as much humility as I can, I will tell you that we are a way more superior product.
00:58:06
Speaker
the robustness, the ease of use, the scalability, the delight that it feels, you know, something that is rough around the edges versus something that feels polished and, you know, closer to perfection. That difference we would basically feel. So you're an iPhone versus an Android like.
00:58:26
Speaker
I think that's an unfair comparison. Android is also, I'm a big fan of Android, although I do have an iPhone. I am an iOS user, but I am a big fan of Android as well. I think it is more about the feel that you get on the outside.
00:58:43
Speaker
and how it feels for something that is polished versus something that gets the job done, but it is not as delightful. I think that is the kind of comparison I'm trying to draw. So you focus more on the UX. UX is a big priority for you to solve. UX is a massive component because you're talking about an audience that is uninitiated.
00:59:05
Speaker
To get them online for the first time, you need to actually blow their minds away. On the other front, I think there are certain capabilities on the product like data sync, data sanctity across devices, users and whatnot, that we also offer. There is a bunch of value-added features with constant updates that we keep on giving out.
00:59:28
Speaker
And we have already surpassed them in all metrics, including the scale, size, engagement, retention, residue, all of that. We've already surpassed them on all of these metrics.
00:59:43
Speaker
When somebody asks me about competition, I finally say the biggest competition is pen and paper and nobody else.
Branding and Trust Building with SMBs
00:59:51
Speaker
Yeah, that's amazing. That's a great way to look at it. So just keep on doing what you do best because this market is huge and we continue to focus on the customer. I think you automatically blur out everything else that is noise.
01:00:05
Speaker
So how do you build a product with Great UX? Is one of the co-founders like a UX specialist and focusing dedicatedly on that? All three of us are actually. And UX does not mean only product. When somebody clicks on that call button to get support,
01:00:23
Speaker
Is the call answered within a couple of seconds? And when the person picks up, does the person say, hello, sir, how is your day going? How can I help you today? We are here to assist you no matter what the issue is. And then this is the query resolved within, let's just say, a couple of minutes. Well, when somebody, let's just say, gives a feature request, do we consciously tell them that this is something on the roadmap and we will have to wait for three months? Or do we say this is not something that we are going to build just because you are asking for it?
01:00:51
Speaker
There are going to be a variety of dimensions that result into great UX. One of them basically has a tangible interface that you interact with is going to be the product also. But then it is so subtle as to say, what is the copy that goes there? What is the language of the notification that you send to the customer?
01:01:09
Speaker
When you draw a contest, what do you optimize for? Or when you run a channel, let's just say a lucky draw, how do you put this forward? What colors do you use? What is that look and feel for communication? What is that value of the customer in all your press releases and communications?
01:01:28
Speaker
universe of that ends up becoming ux so all three of us are you know i would say ux-focused whether they are leading sales or whether that's rakesh leading engineering or product or whether that's me marketing and communications i think
01:01:46
Speaker
All of these dimensions put together create and deliver great UX and we will continue to strive to our level best to make this so out of reach for competition that it will end up becoming a long shot.
01:02:00
Speaker
that, you know, do I aspire to become a Maibel book? And I think that is what our aspiration to be concerned. So you've done some experiments with celebrity marketing. What's been your learning from that? Does it work? In what way does it help?
01:02:17
Speaker
It's recent because we have on and off worked with micro and nano and social media influencers to test, work with a YouTube influencer, work with an Instagram influencer, work with, let's just say, a Facebook community or whatnot. With those kinds of smaller experiments we have been doing since, I would say, summer of 2020,
01:02:40
Speaker
So we've been doing it since then. But the first major branding push for the product and the company came after the series we round, when we voted Manoj Vajpayee as the brand ambassador for my bill book. The simple reason, you know, I would say there are two, three parts, but all of them very simple and straightforward. You need to be able to win this audience trust.
01:03:08
Speaker
It's massively important. Today it may not be as critical because today we are selling, let's just say a digital interface and a software product. But tomorrow you want to bank with them. Tomorrow you want to serve them financial products and services. That trust is going to go a long way in how they perceive what you offer and the ability to penetrate when you cross-sell. That trust is massively important. It is also
01:03:36
Speaker
a sense of being able to relate with them. Just to give you an example, you cannot go to a small business and tell them, you cannot do that.
01:03:51
Speaker
They will turn you down. These small business owners, I think, are some of the smartest entrepreneurs that we have. They understand Juwan and street smartness like nobody else. They are survivors, absolutely. And they are warriors. And they understand the tricks and tips and nuances of their trades better than anybody else.
01:04:16
Speaker
You can't have that tone with them. You can't go and tell them, I'll tell you how to do this. But you can definitely go and tell them that you are doing an amazing job. We are grateful for the service that you provide in your capacity as a business owner. You're creating jobs and contributing to the economy. Here, we are willing to help you. Will you let us help in your endeavor? And if you take that tone, then that goes a really long way. So that way, I think,
01:04:45
Speaker
that element of relatability will not come by you, let's just say, creating a propaganda for what you are doing. This has to be deep-seated and deep-rooted. That is the single reason why, you know, a self-made, A-list, you know, a Bollywood celebrity like Manoj Vajpayee that resonates with
01:05:10
Speaker
majorly, male population that we have in the MSME sector, that to me is bracket that we cater to, which is slightly on the younger side, not too old. Ideal fit. Do you have any data on effectiveness? Like, you know, did it increase? There is definitely, there is definitely uptick. There is definitely uptick, but it's early because branding to this audience, branding in general is a long-term activity, like you can't
01:05:42
Speaker
You also find it proportional to the investment that you make here. So as a young company with just fresh capital infusion, obviously we can't go overboard with how much we can pump in there.
01:06:01
Speaker
we have to maintain a delicate balance between actually delivering
Mission-Driven Impact on Small Businesses
01:06:04
Speaker
value. And that is why my point of let's just say taking 50% on organic acquisition, right? So how do you do against smart and cost optimal ways is something that we continuously strive to work towards, but making sure that you don't lose aggression. So, you know, I get a feeling that in the next 12 to 18 months, I'll be reading about your unicorn round.
01:06:30
Speaker
I'm honored that you think that way only after this one conversation that we have had. It's not so much of a unicorn status per se, but this is more to say that people really need to identify that there is really magical stuff happening at Flobus.
01:06:51
Speaker
We are so excited about the future. We are just so energized by all the development that is happening. And the way we look at this is, this is not a business that you are only doing for the fun of doing business. This has impact. This has impact on millions of lives. This has, let's just say, the upgradation of livelihoods, because in most cases, these small entrepreneurs are practically the sole breadwinners of their family. So if what you do, whether that's software or service or access to capital,
01:07:20
Speaker
If because of what you have to offer, their take-home increases from X to 2X and that results in 2 wheeler to 4 wheeler, a fan to AC and a child not going to school to going to school or let's just say being able to save for university. I think that is massive. That is massive.
01:07:41
Speaker
as much mission driven as we can get and making that the cornerstone of how we build this entire organization. I think less of a unicorn status and more of a recognition and value for all the effort that we are putting in. And partnership basically, whether that's capital infusion or whether that's working with us to co-create products or helping us spread the message across.
01:08:05
Speaker
No matter what kind of support and collaboration we get, all of that is going to be more than welcome in our journey of taking FlowBiz and MyPeople from where it is today to becoming the de facto product and bouquet of services that becomes true enabler of SMB growth in India. I think that is what we are aspiring for.
01:08:25
Speaker
If you like the Found a Thesis podcast, then do check out our other shows on subjects like marketing, technology, career advice, books, and drama. Visit the podium.in, that is, T-H-E-P-O-D-I-U-N.I-N for a complete list of all our shows.
01:08:45
Speaker
Before we end the episode, I want to share a bit about my journey as a podcaster. I started podcasting in 2020 and in the last two years, I've had the opportunity to interview more than 250 founders who are shaping India's future across sectors.
01:09:01
Speaker
If you also want to speak to the best minds in your field and build an enviable network, then you must consider becoming a podcaster. And the first step to becoming a podcaster starts with Zencaster, which takes care of all the nuts and bolts of podcasting, from remote recording to editing to distribution and finally monetization.
01:09:22
Speaker
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