Q & A

{Startup watch: Zaggle} Cost-effective fintech tools to help SMEs conduct transparent business processes

This B2B fintech company provides SaaS solutions for businesses and Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs).

Today’s SMEs are not only looking for technological efficiency, but also cost-effective ways to manage their activities. SMEs especially hate the idea of integrating technology into business processes when evaluating it from a cost perspective. This is where companies like Zaggle come in.

Zaggle’s platform supports many businesses, especially SMEs. The platforms Zaggle has introduced at all levels are cost-effective technology tools that can help SMEs conduct transparent business processes, even in times like this pandemic.

Adoption of evolving technologies has enabled Zaggle to introduce platforms relevant to the current times and hence in great demand. Their specialty lies in arraying cutting edge technologies viz., AI, ML, and OCR (Optical Character Recognition), which are conducive in facilitating a seamless experience to users. They specialize in Deep Tech and AI to provide platform solutions to businesses for expense management and employee reimbursements as well as for rewards and recognition.

The Tech Panda spoke to Raj N, Founder and Chairman of Zaggle about their fintech journey.

Raj N

The role of fintech companies as well as that of Zaggle is to act as facilitators and catalysts of digitization by promoting the appropriate use of technology

“The role of fintech companies as well as that of Zaggle is to act as facilitators and catalysts of digitization by promoting the appropriate use of technology. We work closely with companies from all walks of life, regardless of size and industry. Indeed, our systems and platforms are designed to accommodate use in all organisations,” he says.

The Zaggle Way

Zaggle helps businesses digitize their spending, which supports growth and increases their value through innovative and automated workflows. The company began its journey in 2011 with a vision for the development of proprietary technology platforms that would connect business entities and the needs of consumers with retailers who have tailor-made solutions for them.

Since its inception, Zaggle has worked to develop technologies that have helped companies develop relevant solutions and platforms that are currently in high demand. Their bespoke product offerings are as follows:

Expense Management System (EMS)

EMS is an easy to use, simple platform that facilitates the seamless storage of bills and expenses of the employees which can be reviewed by employers in real time and reimbursed in a jiffy. The platform is powered by AI and ML, which can easily identify and duplicate bills and helps companies save more yearly.

For a more seamless and hassle free experience, the company has partnered with various travel centric entities and integrated the entire solution through API. In all, the expense management system has been successful in achieving 99% efficiency and helps to save more than 10% in terms of accounting expenses and staff. Zaggle has been on the top for providing tailor-made solutions for corporates to handle their expenses coherently. Besides, it has also designed an app to support the users.

Propel

Propel is a channel incentivization program that enables companies to communicate with their channel partners viz, distributors, partners, and retailers. It helps in solving the intricate issues that involves the management of complete lifecycle of sales incentives right from the development of schemes until the end users receive it, analytics, and reconciliation.

Moreover, since the scheme is present all over the country, accumulation and assimilation of data becomes an extremely arduous process and requires a vigorous system for it to work. Hence, Propel was designed as a configurable platform that would enable employers to choose from multiple modules such as employee rewards, channel incentives, user management and redemption services and loyalty schemes.

The platform is developed in a way that enables enterprises to announce their schemes to their distributors through direct plug-ins. Besides, it also enables seamless collation of sales, calculation of incentives and carries out Business Intelligence on the performance as a whole. It is an incredible tool with a striking ROI for the platform.

Save

Save is an employee benefits and tax saving platform that enables corporate employees to save on their taxes through meal, periodicals, and book. The entire process is digital and facilitates complete transparency in terms of the spend being on the correct category and making the process entirely compliant in line with statutory law. At present, 500+ corporate entities are using Save for tax benefits for their employees.

Edge

Edge is a prepaid product platform that enables corporates manage their various spend needs such as gifting, payment for contract employees, and gig workers, to make payments in advance to the contractors and employees.

The entire system can vigorously handle more than millions of transactions per hour. The restrictions on card usage at select merchants are also possible through the in-built technology. Entities can also set spend limits on the card use it both offline and online. Virtual versions of the cards are also available. Some of the well-known use cases of Edge are PayDay Card, Kuber Card, Jewelry Card, and Forex Card.

Origin and Inspiration

Zaggle was founded with the vision of becoming a revolutionary global digital bank. Working as an entrepreneur for many years, Raj realized that banking processes and workflows were broken because it was controlled manually, not digitally.

“The word ‘Zaggle’ was abbreviated as an antidote to ‘Haggle’ and as customers began to look for a solution that would allow them to interact with sellers while also giving them savings and experience seamlessly, offering limitless choice and flexibility, Zaggle was born,” he recalls.

The word ‘Zaggle’ was abbreviated as an antidote to ‘Haggle’ and as customers began to look for a solution that would allow them to interact with sellers while also giving them savings and experience seamlessly, offering limitless choice and flexibility, Zaggle was born

“We identified the problems companies face while trying to handle their expenses and financial requirements. We recognize that conventional accounting and billing systems are broken, slow, and inefficient,” he adds.

Some of the difficulties they have seen businesses face are:

•The complex and tedious workflow
• Payments still made in cash
• No real-time control or visibility over the business spends
• Manual accounting and a reconciling stack of receipts and spreadsheets
• Lots of man-hours required
• Risk of frauds and duplication

The Zaggle USP

Zaggle leverages their tech expertise to innovate for its clients.

“It’s Zaggle’s agility and capability to come up with a rapid answer when clients face issues because of archaic systems at their end,” says Raj.

The fintech’s MSA science architecture helps them to skip on bits of code instead of unnecessary lengthy code making it light and fast to set up in a hassle free manner.

The price at which we innovate and consistently bring more modern versions of our products and listening to our customers, grasp their wishes, and change it into an answer, helps us keep our clients and hold opposition at bay

“The price at which we innovate and consistently bring more modern versions of our products and listening to our customers, grasp their wishes, and change it into an answer, helps us keep our clients and hold opposition at bay,” he says proudly.

“We have Visa, RuPay and Mastercard as our Platform Partners and RBL Bank, Yes Bank, IndusInd, DBS Bank as our companions and having such a broad preference helps our clients to choose amongst variety,” he adds.

Their systems are especially perfect to corporates and are subsequently in a position to speak to their systems due to the fact of a range of API integrations, which they already have in place. Using Zaggle, software program agencies can seamlessly deal with their workflows. For instance, the Smart Scan feature of Zaggle platform enables personnel to take a snap of their bills and add it to the machine instantly.

“Our vast ride with large companies helps us to gain greater customers, as we have already won substantial trips in terms of appreciation the workflows and what form of questions they have and possibly solutions to those queries,” he explains.

Growth Story

Zaggle is growing fast and discovering new avenues for innovation and growth. Over the years, the company has evolved into a B2B fintech SaaS platform, and using digitization as a theme, has worked extensively with businesses to understand their pain points and gradually become an indispensable player when it comes to digitizing spending.

The company saw a five-fold increase in revenues and a fourteen-fold increase in after-tax profit over the last year in FY 2021

“The great success we have achieved with our innovative product offerings has increased our revenues from INR 3500 in 2019-2020 to INR 14500 by March 2021,” he says proudly.

The company saw a five-fold increase in revenues and a fourteen-fold increase in after-tax profit over the last year in FY 2021. Additionally, given the global nature of the products, Zaggle is also looking to expand into international markets. The company has already established its operations in Canada and will soon begin operations in the UK.

Future Plans

Zaggle has devised a three-pronged strategy to expand their growth over the next three to five years, seeking to become an organization of INR one lakh crore per year and slowly move to INR five lakh crores per year.

“As we understand more and more business workflows, we realize that business information systems are unable to keep pace with market transformation and the need for decision-makers to have all the information at their fingertips. Several processes are usually manual and do not talk about systems, another problem is that companies use different systems, and these systems do not talk to each other, which makes it difficult and expends a lot of human effort to download information to Excel and then upload it as Excel, there are various points failure,” says Raj.

The company has plans to launch about five new products in the next 18 months, and most of them in the business and SME space.

Geographically, they expect to spread across different continents around the world because their products are global in nature. We are soon expanding to the US, the Middle East, Singapore, and over time, to Latin America.

“As we expand our business globally, we look forward to opportunities to acquire companies, which will help us better serve our customers and expand our product portfolio, giving us the opportunity to approve the introduction of improved products,” he concludes.

Navanwita Bora Sachdev

Navanwita is the editor of The Tech Panda who also frequently publishes stories in news outlets such as The Indian Express, Entrepreneur India, and The Business Standard