Flobiz was founded by three IIT & BITS alumni, Rakesh Yadav, Aditya Naik and Rahul Raj. A neobank for small & medium businesses that aims to accelerate the growth of their enterprises through technology. The platform is backed by renowned investors like Sequoia Capital India, Elevation Capital, Greenoaks Capital, Beenext and Think Investments. The startup is chasing the mission of digitization to contribute to building an Aatmanirbhar Bharat by solving the most pressing problems of the Indian SMB sector. In early 2020 FloBiz launched its flagship product, myBillBook, which has become one of the highest-rated business apps in India on the Google Play Store.
Q. How did you guys come up with the concept of FloBiz?
Rahul Raj: I, along with Aditya and Rakesh, founded FloBiz in 2019. This was when fintech had already established itself as an enabler for the conduct and growth of small businesses, and technology adoption started showing momentum within this segment. We began with extensive research to understand the pain points and whitespaces for India’s small & medium scale businesses (SMBs). In the process, we interacted with hundreds of business owners and spoke to many financial institutions, tax experts, and banks. The two most significant pain points identified for small businesses were low efficiency and almost no access to formal credit.
With respect to the low efficiency of financial operations, we found that invoicing is core to all types of businesses, and if it can be digitized, then many correlated activities like payment collection and reconciliation, account receivables & payables tracking, inventory management, business reporting can be digitized as well, and overall business efficiency will improve. FloBiz is a leading neobank for SMBs, and we are already solving the pain point of reduced efficiency through our flagship SaaS brand, myBillBook. Our next steps are to solve the second pain point by making credit accessible to SMBs.
Q. Tell our readers about FloBiz and its journey so far.
Since 2020, we’ve successfully crossed multiple stages of a typical SaaS roadmap. We started with building the top-of-the-funnel to get a substantial chunk of users to install and try myBillBook. We achieved our PMF very soon and started paid subscriptions within six months. We are continuously evolving our product with new features & capabilities to use across different platforms seamlessly. Because of our product offerings, capabilities, and features, we have witnessed a tremendous adoption rise in the last few years. More than 65 lakh businesses across the country have tried myBillBook, and we record an average monthly trade volume of $1.5 Bn on the platform. A significant chunk of this user base was acquired during the pandemic when digitalization became indispensable.
Q. Give insight about your first-ever flagship product, ‘myBillBook’
FloBiz’s flagship product, myBillBook, was launched in January 2020 to help SMB owners digitize invoicing, streamline business accounting and automate the workflows of their enterprises. It helps maintain inventory, manage receivables & payables, collect and reconcile payments and access important business reports to enable efficient decision-making. It is a complete billing and accounting software which can help a business owner not just improve efficiency but also help in business growth through better engagement with customers and by using insightful reports to make informed decisions.
myBillBook has recently added e-Invoicing to their invoicing suite and allows generating e-Invoices with a single click. In addition to the convenience of having a single platform for all invoicing, reporting, and accounting needs, it also allows users to use customized billing templates and store their e-invoices on the cloud for any time and anywhere reference. myBillBook is currently available in English, Hindi, Gujarati & Tamil and has consistently been a top-rated app on Google Play Store under the Business category.
Q. What makes FloBiz stand out from other fintech companies?
At the very core philosophical level, what sets us apart is the empathy and deep understanding that we have developed for SMBs. All our efforts in terms of technology, communication, product development, and customer support are aligned with the mission of empowering them through technology. On the product front, myBillBook has been the most loved billing and accounting software, and it is evident from the fact that we have more than lakh reviews on Play Store and have consistently been rated the highest in the category. We have matched the speed of product development as per the ever-evolving GST norms and use cases. With modules for accounting, billing, payment collection, inventory management, CRM, loyalty, and marketing – myBillBook is a one-stop solution for business growth. Our foray into neobanking is backed up by millions of data points we have gathered over the years, and this puts us in a powerful position to best serve Indian SMBs.
Q. Tell us about your future plans for your venture.
myBillBook has recently introduced multiple new features clubbed under the ‘Feature Festival’ property for accounting, enabling our users to better engage with their customers. In addition, myBillBook has a slew of developments in the pipeline to simplify our SMB partners’ lives further. We’re building more industry-specific product modules and features on the product that can add value to SMB owners. Our steady foray into neobanking is also parallel to complement our SaaS offering.
We have started a YouTube channel, All About Business, as a knowledge hub for current and upcoming businesses. It covers topics ranging from business fundamentals to growth tips, to simplifying government policies and much more. Our other stealth mode work-in-progress projects will delight our valued SMB partners in the coming months.
