Case Study: Khatabook, one of the fastest-growing SaaS company

Saksham Jain
3 min readNov 2, 2021

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Image credit — khatabook.com

About —

Khatabook is a fast-growing fintech firm that helps businesses manage their financial transactions, credit information, and accept payments online through various payment gateways and UPI applications. Khatabook sends users reminders via WhatsApp and SMS when money is due to be paid or collected, allowing micro, small, and medium companies to trace transactions that occurred safely and securely.

Founded: January 2019

Headquarters: Bangalore, Karnataka, India

Founders –

· Ashish Sonone

· Dhanesh Kumar

· Vaibhav Kalpe (Quits)

· Jaideep Poonia

· Ravish Naresh

Revenue –

· No Revenue source at present

· Khatabook’s losses increased by 84.71 percent in FY20 to Rs. 126 crores

Valuation —

$600 Million as of August 2021

Major Investors –

Total 34 investors.

· Softbank

· Tencent

· Sequoia Capital

· DST Global

· Tribe Capital

· Moore Strategic Ventures

Business Model —

Khatabook is a smartphone app that assists small businesses in digitizing their accounting and credit balance records. It contributes to minimizing the strain of bookkeeping and accounting. It’s like carrying a khata in your pocket. It is completely free to use and safe for all sorts of companies, allowing store owners to record client credit and debit.

They have shut down their recently launched MyStore feature in which users could have set up their online store.

User Base –

10 million monthly active users dealing with around 26 crore customers In 2020, Khatabook recorded over $100 billion in transactions with over 150 million clients.

Acquisition –

Khatabook acquired Biz Analyst on 25th March 2021 for $10 Million.

Major Competitors –

· Simply Vyapar Apps

· OkCredit

· Dukaan

· Bikayi

· BharatPe

· Instamojo

· Bahi Khata

Strengths and Features –

· The firm is planning to launch UPI Payments to facilitate faster payment processing and accounting. These will assist them in the creation of an ecosystem, beginning with the maintenance of a ledger and progressing to the creation of your own store to transact.

· Khatabook’s app is straightforward, intuitive, and simple to use.

· Its available in 13 regional languages of India

· Creating a complete digital solution for MSMEs by providing various digital solutions like

1. Pagarkhata, a staff management app which is being used by over 2.5 Million businesses across country.

2. Cashbook, for those who want a digital solution for cash handling and tracking only.

3. Biz Analyst, a SaaS business management solution integrated with the Tally ERP9.

Challenges –

· Increasing expenditure and losses in the absence of an income source

· Adoption of digital solutions by offline merchants

· Educating and training users to transact online

Opportunities –

Their target consumers are MSMEs, which account for 30% of India’s GDP. The MSME industry employs around 11 crore people. It is a significantly disorganized and mismanaged sector. Small businesses and shopkeepers continue to retain conventional ledger accounts, which have several problems and can be solved by innovative digital solutions.

Conclusion –

Khatabook has successfully built a widely acknowledged digital ecosystem for MSMEs across the country and is now focused on delivering more financial services via its technology platforms. They are poised to grow rapidly with such a focused and competent team along with huge scope to scale.

Disclaimer — This is not affiliated with the official website/organization. This case study is purely educational in nature. All photos are attributed to their respective owners.

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Saksham Jain
Saksham Jain

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