Bangalore start-up Khatabook unveils its strategy to become profitable

Bangalore-based fintech start-up Khatabook wants to touch the profitability benchmark in the next 18 months. And to achieve this, the MSME lender wants to focus on its digital lending offerings as well as expand the subscriber base for its paid Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) products. In line with this development, Khatabook will also be launching a paid desktop version of Khatabook in November.  

Additionally, the company wants to touch Rs 1,000 crore worth of assets under management in the next 12 months, a statement released by the company revealed.  

 
Commenting on this announcement and the road ahead, Ravish Naresh, co-founder and CEO of the company, said: “We had a strategic timeline to focus on Growth for the first three years and then enter monetization. Our growth journey has been very satisfying. We stand at 10 million monthly active users spread across almost every district in India, and our platform records more than $32 billion in monthly transactions (in value) by our MSME users.” 

The MSME sector contributes about 30 per cent to India’s GDP and 45 per cent to India’s exports and is also the second largest employer of workforce after agriculture, as per data shared by the Micro, Small, and Medium Enterprises Ministry. PM  Narendra Modi has often highlighted that this sector will play a key role in helping India become a $5 lakh crore economy. 
 
Naresh also added that they are now focusing on organic growth and adding more than 600+ monthly installs organically. This “strategic roadmap” will help them become profitable. 
 
Khatabook was founded in 2018 by Naresh and his friends, Dhanesh Kumar and Jaideep Poonia. The Bengaluru-based company was started with the mission to digitise the ledgers or ‘khatas’ of small businesses. Today, it is a fast-growing company with over 10 million active monthly users.