KHATABOOK: "Digital India ka Digital Khata"

When Dhoni invested in this Fintech start-up called "KhataBook" I wondered that what made a cricketer like Mahendra Singh Dhoni invest in this start-up? This intrigued me to read on this start-up story and then there was no end to it! "KHATA" means "accounts" in Hindi and there is where the essence of this start-up idea lies. Khatabook was started in 2018 as a book-keeping application for small and medium-sized enterprises to record their daily transactions digitally.

It basically helps business to transfer their physical ledger to digital copies and also allows them to accept online payments. Founded by four IIT alums, Ravish Naresh, Jaideep Poonia, Dhanesh Kumar, and Ashish Sonone.

The idea was to shift the focus of small traders from physical to digital, a simple cash management application for small traders to move their accounts to digital platforms. What makes this app attractive is that it employs artificial intelligence to track SMS alerts for transactions and use that to keep a track of accounts and spending. With Jio Penetration in the country in the same year, this paved the way for this application in smaller cities and towns. Khatabook is unique and has fewer major competitors. However, Okcredit and Vyapaar are the closest competition in the market. Khatabook evolved from a simple SMS App back in 2016 where Ravish Naresh along with his friends started with a digital spending manager app called Kyte.ai. The app lets a user understand their spending patterns by using transactional SMS alerts. But the app though was a good idea lost its momentum somewhere. Upon digging deeper, they realized that most of their users are based out of metro cities, and first-time online users did not deal in digital transactions.

Currently, Khatabook is valued at around $275 million to $300 million and available in 11 languages across India, Nepal, Pakistan, and Bangladesh. Khatabook truly had a transition from a simple SMS App to Fintech App in India. According to App Annie data, Khatabook had 1.1 million daily active users!

Can Fintech be the new normal?

Source: ET Times & Yourstory.com

Thank You,

Regards,

Shivani Jambaulikar,

E-Cell,

IBS Mumbai.