Happay’s Story: From being a serendipitous product to India’s fastest growing B2B company

There are about 800 new start-ups created every year in India. Which ranks third amongst technology-driven startups in the world with Bangalore being the favored hub for budding tech entrepreneurs. Happay’s is one such B2B startup that has revolutionized the manner in which businesses monitor and control the expenses incurred by their personnel.

The world of startups has been witness to many a success story and some colossal failures as well. But that has not deterred the new-age entrepreneurs who continue to launch new startups promising more effective solutions and services.

Introduction

Happay’s was started in 2012 with the aim of making payments a happier experience. Initially, it was a consumer-based product—focusing on P2P transfers.

At that point, Happay was the first-of-a-kind platform-agnostic product that worked on GPRS technology. It allowed peer-to-peer payment solutions with mobile being the enabler. They were soon planning to expand payment services for merchants at brick-and-mortar stores.

By the end of 2013, the platform had more than 200,000 users, who were mostly college-going young students.

However, They felt that the revenue model was not strong. While loading the wallet, The company would lose close to 2% as payment gateway charges. So, the company had to earn this 2% + profit margin from the merchants.

As we all know, the retail industry in the country works on wafer-thin margins. Happay had requests from corporates to address their problems with payments. They realized that the gaps in corporate payments were much wider and there was no innovation in the B2B space. Hence, they shifted their focus to B2B payments.

The experience has been overwhelming. Along with our product, we too have matured. Our product has been well received by different industries & businesses of all sizes… they said

“Flexibility, visibility, and control” is the key USP of Happay products. They started with expense management as it has low barriers to entry. In the future, they planned to integrate the module for all other variable expenses such as vendor management, employee expense management, and petty cash. Employee salaries are something that they are not focusing on currently but are open to looking at it as an option.

“Our product can integrate with SAP, Tally, QuickBooks and Much More “. Integration with accounting software is not an issue as our product is flexible enough to export data… They Said,

What Makes Happay’s Different?

Happay’s is one of its kind, business spending management solution that streamlines your expense workflow from end-to-end (expense reporting to reconciliation) and gives you real-time visibility and control over business spending.

It is an intelligent and intuitive expense management solution that offers Happay. Prepaid Cards powered by Visa or MasterCard and can easily be managed and controlled via desktop and mobile.

Happay’s Employees can use Happay Prepaid Cards for business expenses like travel, fuel, utility payments, petty cash expenses, digital marketing expenses, etc. A company’s management can load money on cards. Track expenses, and set spending limits and policies – right from their web or mobile dashboard, in real time.

Anshul Rai is the CEO of Happay and is responsible for driving company’s vision and managing the technology and all possible business collaboration.

Happay Founders Journey

He is a Computer Science graduate from IIT Kharagpur in 2010. Post engineering, he worked with Microsoft Research Lab for two wonderful years, where he learned how to solve unsolved problems through technology.

With his team, he filed two patents and published four research papers in International Journals. His MSR work is now an active product by Microsoft. He loves building things enjoys reading about entrepreneurship, and loves to explain his newfound discoveries to others.

Varun Rathi is the COO of Happay, responsible for Sales, Marketing and Operations.

He comes from a business family and hence believes that starting a business is his birthright, which in modern terms is called ‘entrepreneurship’. He graduated from IIT Kharagpur in 2010. After graduation, Varun joined the TATA, which he thought was ‘too’ comfortable. He was always passionate about technology and loves to use it to make lives easier.

He is obsessed with creating awesome user experiences and makes sure nothing is ever compromised on that front. He is proud of his business skills being from a business background. He is using them with full gusto to make Happay the most preferred mode of payment for companies.

Happay’s has raised $500 K from Prime Venture Partners in the seed round.

Happay’s current product takes care of all the expenses that a business incurs. It’s an end-to-end solution which takes streamlines the whole workflow from expense reporting to reconciliation. It gives the management real-time visibility and control over business spending. They shall be focusing on further penetration and adoption of Happay in Tier 2 & 3 cities.

They are often referred to as a “tailor-made solution” company as they understand that every business is different & faces unique issues. They go to lengths to ensure that there’s a great fit between our product and the company’s requirements.

As Mr. Griffith David, the CEO of Habanero Foods International puts it “The team has been great to work with and their support is excellent. All key requirements for business users like me. Several minor changes we requested were implemented immediately. I would highly recommend this application to other CEOs”

Happay’s reason for success

Happay’s reason for success is that we really worked hard on the product. Our ears are still always open to feedback & we try to incorporate & implement a suggestion as soon as possible.

The founders still go to meet the clients in person to understand if there are any amendments.  They would like the product & every kind of feedback is taken very seriously.

In general, India has a large SME base (around 41 million SMEs in India). There is a huge untapped potential when you build products for this base. As per our estimation, business spending management in India is over a $1 B market.

Our solution fits any business that has a distributed network. They currently serve clients across 30 industry segments. Engage with their most valuable clients are Aditya Birla Retail Ltd, Health & Glow, YourStory, Subway, Ayurveda hospitals, Unnati NGO, Ibibo group, Uber, Grofers, Urban Ladder, Knowlarity Solutions, etc.

Just like any other SaaS company, They charge Their customers on a per-account basis per account per month basis.