11–20 of 42 posts
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.
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 th…
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 :).
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
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!
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.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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?
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!
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…
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.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
WhatsApp is the main form of communication in India, both personal and business.
Good luck with launch!
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…
This is the pain point we are addressing.