Paybooks automates financial touch points for SMEs

Focusing on small things with great passion was a way of life for Samira Rao. After becoming a Chartered Accountant, numbers further sharpened his focus and fueled his entrepreneurial journey to solve problems using technology. He chose to simplify and automate all the financial touch points between employers and employees and  co-founded Paybooks along with his childhood friend Gururaja Upendra in 2012.

Paybooks is a payroll software as a service (SaaS) company which is on a mission to delight business owners with worry-free month-ends by automating payroll and compliance management. It also helps employees to collaborate better with their managers, HR and finance teams by providing an app to manage their leaves, reimbursements, flexible benefits, payslips and tax workings. “Our customers’ employees love the ability to apply for leaves or reimbursements right from their mobiles. The HR and the managers also enjoy a hassle-free approval and tracking of employee claims,” said Rao.

With a growing internet user-base and smartphone penetration, Rao says it is easy for companies to access Paybooks. “India has about 40 million SME units employing more than 100 million people.  As per various reports of Zinnov and Nasscom, we estimate the payroll and benefits market to be  $2 billion in revenue in the next five years, and Paybooks is targeting a share of $100 million,” he said.

 Laying down the future plans of Paybooks, Rao said the company wants to have a core focus on UI (user interface) and UX (user experience) and to remove the idea that payroll is a mundane and complex activity to manage.

The firm also plans to monetise the employees using the Paybooks platform by offering focused tax and financial planning tools. With more than 150 chartered accountants, HR firms and big BPOs using Paybooks to deliver their services to clients, Paybooks is looking to launch a payroll marketplace shortly. “We are planning to put together chartered accountants, financial service providers and ecommerce players so that our customers will have seamless access to various solutions,” said Gururaja Upendra, co-founder and head of sales and operations.

“Since ours is a SaaS product, we charge on a per employee per month basis. We charge Rs 40 per employee per month with a base price of Rs 700 per company,” said Upendra.

With a growing customer base of over 2,000 companies, Paybooks seeks to sharpen its focus on the SME segment and roll out solutions to help bridge the current gaps in HR, payroll and benefits management. Rao feels that the payroll market in India is heavily fragmented and the codification of labour laws and increased digital thrust on compliance would result in a big untapped opportunity which Paybooks wants to fill.

Paybooks recently closed a bridge round, which was lead by Singapore-based bankers, and is now looking at  a Series A round to fund customer acquisition and further strengthen its product portfolio.