How do you see the journey to one millionth customer? How did you achieve this?
The journey has been remarkable and the team here has been able to cross a tough milestone that only an elite few companies have crossed the world over. I think it is a testament to our ability to understand the needs of SMEs in emerging markets, our ability to translate these into world-class technologies, and our ability to sell it in a simple manner across many markets at scale. This is a foundation on which we can now aim to build our future upon.
What are Tally's current product lines and who are the users?
Today, the Tally Solutions’ product line powers one million businesses across 140 countries including India, Middle East & North Africa, sub-Saharan Africa, Asia Pacific, and SAARC countries.
Our customers span various industry verticals, including BFSI, retail, hospitality, healthcare, manufacturing, education, and construction.
What are your top challenges and strategies to tackle them?
As we prepare for the next few years, there are two major challenges that we need to address – the first is the technology challenge, and the second is the scale challenge. We know that the world has been moving faster and faster into a highly connected and highly mobile world, but unfortunately core business systems – whether it be a large enterprise or a small enterprise – are moving slower than expected. We believe that the company, that will bring on the next few million customers (in India or other emerging markets), will need to think through how these technologies can be embraced by SMEs at costs that support a strong and viable business model.
The next big question that we have to ask – what is the right way to reach our customers with the right quality. We launched a renewed partner program called Vriddhi a little more than a year ago and we are now starting to see several benefits out of that. Customers are getting access to better services, partners are earning more, and we are seeing a lot of interest from new avenues in partnering with us as well.
Some other major hurdles that we have to cross over are due to the imminent and pending changes with respect to GST. Our customers are expecting us to bring them the simplest way to help them manage their transition into GST. We are getting ready for this.
The other challenge is the need of a more supportive tax frame. We are continuously enhancing our product to ease compliance process for businesses in India.
Do you have any new India-specific plans?
Within India, one key focus over the next few quarters will be to spread farther and deeper than we already have. We have increased our presence three-fold in the last six months and will continue to invest there. We are also continuing to invest in bringing greater connected services to our customers.
What are Tally's priorities for 2016 and beyond?
Our priorities are clear. We are committed and focused to the Small and Medium businesses in India. We are now beginning to invest seriously in markets outside India as well. By bringing in new product lines and a host of connected services we hope to dramatically increase the one million to a few more very soon.
