Khatabook acquires SaaS business management platform Biz Analyst

Digital ledger app startup Khatabook on Thursday announced that it has acquired SaaS business management app Biz Analyst in a deal worth $10 million (about Rs 72.6 crore) in a mix of cash and equity.   

The acquisition is a part of the startup’s ongoing efforts to monetize services and grow its current monthly active userbase of 10 million merchants. 

Khatabook said it can now offer premium value-added services to help its merchant customers scale business. Users will be able to create a closer integration with their upstream supply chains involving distributors, wholesalers, traders, and suppliers. Apart from these, they can avail additional features to improve their efficiency through business analytics, sales force automation and digital invoicing. 

The Biz Analyst team will continue to run independently, retaining Mumbai operations while maintaining synergies with the Khatabook headquarter in Bengaluru. The original co-founding team of Biz Analyst -- Vaibhav Vasa, Mehul Sutariya, and Nilesh Zaveri -- will now be a part of Khatabook’s leadership team. 

“This deal is our first strategic acquisition as we intensify our network effects up the supply chain and focus on monetization. The features and strengths that Biz Analyst offers are the perfect extension to our present business portfolio. The acquisition is a step forward for Khatabook in its mission to provide business efficiency to India’s MSMEs through value-added services,” Ravish Naresh, co-founder and CEO, Khatabook said in a statement.  

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Founded in late 2016, Biz Analyst is a cash flow positive business providing solutions to SMEs using Tally accounting software. Its services help users automate daily business operations and make data-driven decisions to manage sales, inventory, outstandings and productivity.  

The Mumbai-based startup has over 80,000 paid users, now is expected to double the user base in 2021 through Khatabook integration.

“Together, we look forward to expanding the digital adoption by SMEs through our affordable SAAS solutions and connecting businesses across different verticals onto a single platform. As the new chapter in our growth journey unfolds, we are excited to create bigger and better opportunities for our team, for our partners, and most importantly, for our customers, by bringing in products that cater towards solving day-to-day challenges faced by them,” Vasa and Sutariya, founders, Biz Analys said in a joint statement. 

During the pandemic months in 2020, several MSMEs and kiranas looked at adopting technology to become operationally resilient. Having gained a significant chunk of digital savvy mechants as userbase, Khatabook’s platform recorded 1.4 billion transactions with a cumulative value of more than $100 billion.