#khatabook

𝐏𝐞𝐡𝐥𝐚 𝐭𝐡𝐨𝐮𝐠𝐡𝐭: “Ab kya kare?”

𝐃𝐮𝐬𝐫𝐚 𝐭𝐡𝐨𝐮𝐠𝐡𝐭: “Kitna loss ho gaya…”

Sach ye hai ki paper system me ye risk hamesha rehta hai. Aur jab tak problem hoti nahi, tab tak hum serious nahi hote.

Maybe it's time to switch. Maybe it's time to go digital.

𝐓𝐫𝐲 𝐒𝐡𝐨𝐩𝐚𝐯𝐞𝐫 𝐃𝐢𝐠𝐢𝐭𝐚𝐥 𝐊𝐡𝐚𝐭𝐚 𝐒𝐨𝐟𝐭𝐰𝐚𝐫𝐞 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐠𝐞𝐭 14 𝐝𝐚𝐲𝐬 𝐅𝐫𝐞𝐞 𝐓𝐫𝐢𝐚𝐥 :

Mumbai, 9th Sep:  Aavishkaar Capital Investee, grain bank startup, Ergos was featured in Forbes India in a story titled ‘Ergos: Grain as an asset and currency” which highlighted the journey of  Ergos in converting farmers harvest into a collateral which can be used to access finance. Ergos today operates out of 250 locations and works with 1, 50,000 farmers and 1,100 traders.

Ten years ago, Kishor Jha and Praveen Kumar decided to put their banking and corporate experience to use in the farming sector. Both came from a farming family background and had seen the problems faced by farmers when it came to selling their grain and raising working capital. Most marginal farmers—which form about 80 percent of the community—rush to sell foodgrain immediately after harvest to repay the money they would have borrowed from a moneylender, typically at a high interest rate.

“When the grain is ready, more than 80 to 90 percent farmers end up selling everything within 30 to 40 days,” says Jha on a call from Bengaluru. Even if they are not in debt, there is no place where they can store their grain since most commercial warehouses are not at village locations, but are situated closer to consumption centres. Jha and Kumar wanted to turn that grain into collateral, an asset that small farmers could pledge with a bank and access finance at a lower rate, as well as sell over a period of time according to their cash flow needs.

So they leased a warehouse in Bihar and asked small farmers to deposit their grain with them. After checking the quality of the grain, just like a bank, they issued a khata book and made entries in the passbook. Their startup, Ergos, founded in 2012, made the warehouse a grain bank, and grain a farmer’s currency.

And while a buyer might not go around buying 10 to 20 bags each from several farmers, integrating the stock meant a buyer could even buy a 100,000 bags belonging to several farmers from an area. “That’s the model that actually unlocks the value of selling even one bag to a buyer,” says Jha, founder and CEO of Ergos.

Fintech firm Khatabook said it has achieved a milestone of over Rs 1.8 trillion monthly recorded transactions across its platform – Khatabook, Cashbook, and BizAnalyst. Founded in January 2019, Khatabook claims it has 10 million monthly active merchant users, managing more than 344 million customers on its platforms. Khatabook is India's fastest growing SaaS (software-as-a-service) company that enables micro, small and medium businesses to increase efficiency and profitability through safe and secure digital solutions.

“(The year) 2021 has been a crucial year in Khatabook’s journey. Besides our continued growth momentum, we made several important long-term strategic decisions for business and building our talent base,” said Ravish Naresh, CEO, and co-founder, Khatabook. “This milestone showcases our commitment to the empowerment of MSMEs in India. 2022 is going to be an exciting year for the MSME ecosystem.”

Amid the growing demand for technology solutions by Indian MSMEs (micro, small and medium enterprises), Khatabook has experienced exponential growth in its 3-year journey. In the past 3 years, the Khatabook platform has penetrated the grassroots of India and has a user base spread across nearly every district in the country. Khatabook is available in 13 regional languages and close to 25 per cent of users on Khatabook are using the app in their preferred regional language. Significant growth in user base, over 50 per cent month-on-month on Khatabook platform, remains organic, indicating the trust in the brand and Indian MSMEs strong inclination towards digital adoption. Maharashtra, Rajasthan, Delhi, Uttar Pradesh and Gujarat were the top 5 user base growth states for Khatabook in 2021.

Acquired in March 2021, Biz Analyst by Khatabook has touched over 100,000 paying customers in 2021. Biz Analyst is uniquely positioned to provide end-to-end real-time business intelligence and decision-making capabilities to SMEs, including business insights based on the app’s integration with tally software of SMEs.

Cashbook by Khatabook, an expense management tool, has crossed over 1.8 million installs in 2021. Available in 15 languages, Cashbook is an exclusive android app for those who want to leverage only the expense management functionality. Cashbook is also available as a feature within the Khatabook app.