5 ms·

Launch HN: Swipe (YC S21) – Simple Billing and Accounting for India

75 points by sri-teja 5y ago

Hi HN, we’re Aditya and Sri Teja, founders of Swipe (https://getswipe.in https://getswipe.in). We make it easy for local businesses in India to invoice their customers over WhatsApp. Instead of giving a paper invoice to their customer, Swipe users send a WhatsApp message with a link that allows them to pay instantly with a variety of payment methods. 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 https://getswipe.in. Please share your feedback with us.

ash110 5y ago
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?
- sri-teja 5y ago
  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.
murukesh_s 5y ago
Good luck with launch!
- sri-teja 5y ago
  Thank you.
thunderbong 5y ago
What is your business model? How are you planning to generate revenue?
- wtmt 5y ago
  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.
  - sri-teja 5y ago
    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.
    - wtmt 5y ago
      I should’ve worded my question more comprehensively. Any plans for integrations with other platforms?
  - spoonjim 5y ago
    WhatsApp is the main form of communication in India, both personal and business.
    - wtmt 5y ago
      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).
      - jeswin 5y ago
        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.
forgingahead 5y ago
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.
- adityadsr5 5y ago
  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 :).
sirius87 5y ago
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 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!
- adityadsr5 5y ago
  Absolutely spot on. This is the pain point we are addressing.
  - abhishekbasu 5y ago
    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?
    - sudhirj 5y ago
      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.
ignoramous 5y ago
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? ---- 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.
- sri-teja 5y ago
  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.
krishvs 5y ago
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!
- adityadsr5 5y ago
  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.
2Gkashmiri 5y ago
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.
- adityadsr5 5y ago
  Thanks. For sure. Please send me a Hi on aditya@getswipe.in and we can take it up from there.
  - 2Gkashmiri 5y ago
    just pinged you. looking forward to talking to you
baybal2 5y ago
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...
- adityadsr5 5y ago
  Thank you :) Currently we are focused only on the Indian market. I would like to know more about what American Swipe is?
  - baybal2 5y ago
    A payment processor.
    - adityadsr5 5y ago
      Sure will definitely take a look. Thanks!
      - baybal2 5y ago
        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.
zero_billion 5y ago
congrats on the launch, Aditya!
- adityadsr5 5y ago
  Thanks a lot :)
umangrathi 5y ago
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).
- adityadsr5 5y ago
  Thank you. Sure we would love to help you with this. Lets connect on whatsapp 7989207832.

75 points by sri-teja 5y ago

ash110 5y ago

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?

sri-teja 5y ago
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.

murukesh_s 5y ago

Good luck with launch!

sri-teja 5y ago
Thank you.

thunderbong 5y ago

What is your business model? How are you planning to generate revenue?

wtmt 5y ago
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.
- sri-teja 5y ago
  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.
  - wtmt 5y ago
    I should’ve worded my question more comprehensively. Any plans for integrations with other platforms?
- spoonjim 5y ago
  WhatsApp is the main form of communication in India, both personal and business.
  - wtmt 5y ago
    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).
    - jeswin 5y ago
      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.

forgingahead 5y ago

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.

adityadsr5 5y ago
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 :).

sirius87 5y ago

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 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!

adityadsr5 5y ago
Absolutely spot on. This is the pain point we are addressing.
- abhishekbasu 5y ago
  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?
  - sudhirj 5y ago
    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.

ignoramous 5y ago

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? ---- 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.

sri-teja 5y ago
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.

krishvs 5y ago

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!

adityadsr5 5y ago
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.

2Gkashmiri 5y ago

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.

adityadsr5 5y ago
Thanks. For sure. Please send me a Hi on aditya@getswipe.in and we can take it up from there.
- 2Gkashmiri 5y ago
  just pinged you. looking forward to talking to you

baybal2 5y ago

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...

adityadsr5 5y ago
Thank you :) Currently we are focused only on the Indian market. I would like to know more about what American Swipe is?
- baybal2 5y ago
  A payment processor.
  - adityadsr5 5y ago
    Sure will definitely take a look. Thanks!
    - baybal2 5y ago
      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.

zero_billion 5y ago

congrats on the launch, Aditya!

adityadsr5 5y ago
Thanks a lot :)

umangrathi 5y ago

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).

adityadsr5 5y ago
Thank you. Sure we would love to help you with this. Lets connect on whatsapp 7989207832.