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

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

#21

Post by 2Gkashmiri »

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.

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

#22

Post by ignoramous »

sri-teja wrote: post #17
ignoramous wrote: post #14

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…

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 sal…

Thanks for your reply. Swipe is then an alternative to Tally, Freshbooks, Zohobooks, ClearTax, Vyapar, Gimbooks et al?

My comparision with Bikyai was prompted by Swipe's support for setting up an online store. And with the well-funded Khatabook (and OKCredit), because they are bound to enter invoicing and tax-compliance market eventually (if they haven't already: https://wap.business-standard.com/article/companies/fintech-...)

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

#25

Post by wtmt »

spoonjim wrote: post #11
wtmt wrote: post #5

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.

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).

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

#26

Post by sri-teja »

ignoramous wrote: post #22
sri-teja wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 sal…

Thanks for your reply. Swipe is then an alternative to Tally, Freshbooks, Zohobooks, ClearTax, Vyapar, Gimbooks et al? My comparision with Bikyai was prompted by Swipe's support for setting up an online store. And with the well-funded Khatabook (and OKCredit), because they are bound to enter invoicing and tax-compliance market eventually (if they haven't already: https://wap.business-standard.com/article/companies/fi…

We are building this product from the business owner/founder's perspective to make it easy to improve business using technology rather than just for accounting purpose. The motivation to just record the transaction is lesser, but to collect payments easily from the customers, at the same time updating the accounts automatically is valuable. We are focussed on that which the other softwares in the industry are missing.

Also at this stage, we are not too much worried about the competition as this is a big market opportunity and we believe it is going to be much more bigger market than today in the coming couple of years. So sooner or later competition exists.

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

#27

Post by wtmt »

sri-teja wrote: post #9
wtmt wrote: post #5

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.

Yes, they can share the bills directly from the platform. For the users who don't use WhatsApp for their business, they can either send emails or we have an option to print/download these bills and give it to their customers.

I should’ve worded my question more comprehensively. Any plans for integrations with other platforms?

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

#28

Post by adityadsr5 »

krishvs wrote: post #16

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…

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.

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

#29

Post by adityadsr5 »

baybal2 wrote: post #23

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...

Thank you :)

Currently we are focused only on the Indian market.

I would like to know more about what American Swipe is?

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

#30

Post by umangrathi »

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).
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