Should dotPH keep control of the PH domain registry?

Domains are an essential part of branding, which is why premium domains command a price. But with issues arising from dotPH’s management of the PH registry, should administration be re-assigned?

Time and again, issues arise regarding the Philippine domain registry, dotPH, particularly whether its current administrator is handling the domain registry and registrar in a viable manner. Simply put, administrator Joel Disini says he was given the mandate to govern the PH registry by the IANA in the early 1990′s, and he will continue to do so until the same body deems him ineligible.

Critics, notably PHNet (which handles the .edu.ph namespace and previously .gov.ph) and the proponents of the Philippine Domain Name Authority Convenors (PhilDAC) among others, say dotPH engages in monopolistic practices, which has contributed to a slow growth in the PH domain industry.

To illustrate, PH domains cost US$35 annually apiece, which is the same price as it was in 2000. In contrast, generic top-level domains like .COM, .NET and .ORG now sell for as low as $8 per year, and can even go lower with promo codes.

theBobbery has made an excellent compilation of the issue, asking whether dotPH can handle the registry in a competent manner. Some issues were put to highlight in Franky Branckaute’s post, which includes a list of relevant media coverage:

• dotPH runs both the PH registry and as operates a registrar itself, thereby competing with its own registrars and resellers.
• dotPH runs its own ISP, which results in a conflict of interest.
• dotPH can price PH domains at will because it does not have anyone to compete with in the registry space.

As a disclosure, I worked with Joel during a very brief stint as a product manager and internal auditor at dotPH in 2005. Back then, the issues were still the same. The company’s stance against critics was that dotPH was given technical and administrative oversight of the registry, and that the Philippine government did not have any control over the same. On pricing, dotPH maintains that it offers bulk pricing to its resellers, who can then price domains accordingly. dotPH did not want to compete with its own resellers, and hence could not reduce the $35 price on direct purchases.

In my mind, this comes with both pros and cons.

The “pros” are a bit limited, but here’s what I think:

• Higher barrier to entry discourages domain squatting.
• Companies and brands are encouraged to think about their branding strategy more carefully (rather than do the shotgun approach of buying a lot of cheap .COM domains, intending to choose only one). Interesting plays on “PH” come to mind, like technogra.ph and anything that ends with “ph”.

Meanwhile, the cons are more numerous, and have a direct effect on how online businesses can thrive locally using the PH namespace:

• A more expensive PH domain nam means local companies have to spend more (about PhP 1,400 annually) to maintain their domain names, as opposed to using a generic domain, which costs about PhP 300 per year.
• A more expensive domain has forced some website owners to use “ph” variations, instead, such as xxxxPH.com. A site I used to co-edit, PinoyAutoBlog.com opted to use the slang term for Filipinos, “Pinoy” instead of use the Philippine domain identifier.
• Domain owners often find the need to buy both the COM.PH and .PH domains, to prevent their domain name from being squatted on.
• Resellers and distributors are hard-pressed to earn from reselling PH domains, except if they can sell in bulk, or if they have ex-deals with dotPH.

The author (R) with dotPH CEO Joel Disini (L) at WordCamp Manila in 2008.

Is dotPH competent enough to handle domain administration?

But there is one thing that has brought dotPH to the limelight again in the recent days. e-Commerce startup Sulit.com.ph has seen some downtime over the weekend. According to Sulit CEO RJ David, the site was brought down due to a vulnerability within dotPH’s systems.

dotPH says they are still looking into the matter, and has addressed the Sulit issue temporarily by locking down domain changes. The speculation is that the exploit was done through DNS poisoning, which re-routes web traffic by changing the actual physical server that the domain name points toward. In this case, going to “sulit.com.ph” redirected users to a third-party landing page.

I sought dotPH out for a comment, and CEO Joel stressed their use of a “domain lock” as a temporary solution.

“We’re studying the issue, but haven’t found a security problem on our end. Will update you once we have a definitive answer. There is a domain lock option for users who don’t want their DNS modified. A signed letter is necessary for any change to take place. Even in the event of a security breach, the domain cannot be modified.”

For now, issues still remain, namely:

• Whether the ICANN should re-delegate administrative control of the PH ccTLD to another party, given that dotPH’s commercial interests might be in conflict with the administration of a registry.
• There are precedents in other countries, in which their registries had been re-delegated to ensure better competition and management.
• There is still the question of dotPH adequately addressing the potential security vulnerability.

Can dotPH pivot?

Domains have been the bread and butter for dotPH. The company has also serviced enterprise communication needs through its sister company the Email Company (EMC), which offers ISP services and email to corporate clients. However, in the past years, the company has tried to offer different online, web and mobile services, that in my opinion were ahead of their time.

For instance, there was the dotPhone effort. “PH” can be considered to represent “phone” and Joel and co thought it would be a good way to set-up a unified point of contact, with your PH domain eventually replacing your phone number. Critics were vocal against dotPhone, as it would dilute the sovereign value of the PH as a Philippine-specific TLD.

Then there was i.PH, which started out as a blogging service, and eventually pivoted to a social network aggregation service. The service was unable to compete with the likes of WordPress.com, and then eventually social networks like Facebook and microblogs like Twitter.

Joel also mulled developing a location-based service, where we would input GIS information onto satellite imagery. Businesses and individuals could then use the service to navigate and look for local establishments and businesses. Instead of spending millions to acquire data, Joel wisely decided that Google would eventually take over the space once Google Maps gets Philippine data — and it did!

The question here is whether dotPH can innovate? If we take out control of the registry — and dotPH remains a registrar — will the company still thrive amid competition? I would think so. Joel is no stranger to the startup culture, having bootstrapped the dotPH business after his stint as a developer at the Valley in the ’80s. But perhaps with the status quo, dotPH has not truly found a need to innovate. Will a re-assignment be the catalyst?

Why this is important

In the case of Sulit, it’s a matter of their being unable to render their services because dotPH’s own services supposedly failed. Being an e-commerce site — and the #1 Philippine website as per Alexa — I can only imagine how much revenue was lost in the one to two days the site was offline, from the point of view of sellers. The site also earns from ads, and downtime would have an effect on its own revenue stream, and that of advertisers.

For the rest of us, the standing concern here whether it is viable to get a PH domain for your company or web service, given the potential security flaws. I can name a few startups and publications that have chosen to go for a PH domain, such as Tripid and Webgeek. Even torrent search site KAT.PH has chosen to go the PH route (although the reason behind this can possibly be explained in another post).

Sure, you can go for a .COM domain instead. But if .PH were cheaper and more secure, would you go for a PH domain?

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Should dotPH keep control of the PH domain registry?

Domains are an essential part of branding, which is why premium domains command a price. But with issues arising from dotPH’s management of the PH registry, should administration be re-assigned?

Time and again, issues arise regarding the Philippine domain registry, dotPH, particularly whether its current administrator is handling the domain registry and registrar in a viable manner. Simply put, administrator Joel Disini says he was given the mandate to govern the PH registry by the IANA in the early 1990′s, and he will continue to do so until the same body deems him ineligible.

Critics, notably PHNet (which handles the .edu.ph namespace and previously .gov.ph) and the proponents of the Philippine Domain Name Authority Convenors (PhilDAC) among others, say dotPH engages in monopolistic practices, which has contributed to a slow growth in the PH domain industry.

To illustrate, PH domains cost US$35 annually apiece, which is the same price as it was in 2000. In contrast, generic top-level domains like .COM, .NET and .ORG now sell for as low as $8 per year, and can even go lower with promo codes.

theBobbery has made an excellent compilation of the issue, asking whether dotPH can handle the registry in a competent manner. Some issues were put to highlight in Franky Branckaute’s post, which includes a list of relevant media coverage:

• dotPH runs both the PH registry and as operates a registrar itself, thereby competing with its own registrars and resellers.
• dotPH runs its own ISP, which results in a conflict of interest.
• dotPH can price PH domains at will because it does not have anyone to compete with in the registry space.

As a disclosure, I worked with Joel during a very brief stint as a product manager and internal auditor at dotPH in 2005. Back then, the issues were still the same. The company’s stance against critics was that dotPH was given technical and administrative oversight of the registry, and that the Philippine government did not have any control over the same. On pricing, dotPH maintains that it offers bulk pricing to its resellers, who can then price domains accordingly. dotPH did not want to compete with its own resellers, and hence could not reduce the $35 price on direct purchases.

In my mind, this comes with both pros and cons.

The “pros” are a bit limited, but here’s what I think:

• Higher barrier to entry discourages domain squatting.
• Companies and brands are encouraged to think about their branding strategy more carefully (rather than do the shotgun approach of buying a lot of cheap .COM domains, intending to choose only one). Interesting plays on “PH” come to mind, like technogra.ph and anything that ends with “ph”.

Meanwhile, the cons are more numerous, and have a direct effect on how online businesses can thrive locally using the PH namespace:

• A more expensive PH domain nam means local companies have to spend more (about PhP 1,400 annually) to maintain their domain names, as opposed to using a generic domain, which costs about PhP 300 per year.
• A more expensive domain has forced some website owners to use “ph” variations, instead, such as xxxxPH.com. A site I used to co-edit, PinoyAutoBlog.com opted to use the slang term for Filipinos, “Pinoy” instead of use the Philippine domain identifier.
• Domain owners often find the need to buy both the COM.PH and .PH domains, to prevent their domain name from being squatted on.
• Resellers and distributors are hard-pressed to earn from reselling PH domains, except if they can sell in bulk, or if they have ex-deals with dotPH.

The author (R) with dotPH CEO Joel Disini (L) at WordCamp Manila in 2008.

Is dotPH competent enough to handle domain administration?

But there is one thing that has brought dotPH to the limelight again in the recent days. e-Commerce startup Sulit.com.ph has seen some downtime over the weekend. According to Sulit CEO RJ David, the site was brought down due to a vulnerability within dotPH’s systems.

dotPH says they are still looking into the matter, and has addressed the Sulit issue temporarily by locking down domain changes. The speculation is that the exploit was done through DNS poisoning, which re-routes web traffic by changing the actual physical server that the domain name points toward. In this case, going to “sulit.com.ph” redirected users to a third-party landing page.

I sought dotPH out for a comment, and CEO Joel stressed their use of a “domain lock” as a temporary solution.

“We’re studying the issue, but haven’t found a security problem on our end. Will update you once we have a definitive answer. There is a domain lock option for users who don’t want their DNS modified. A signed letter is necessary for any change to take place. Even in the event of a security breach, the domain cannot be modified.”

For now, issues still remain, namely:

• Whether the ICANN should re-delegate administrative control of the PH ccTLD to another party, given that dotPH’s commercial interests might be in conflict with the administration of a registry.
• There are precedents in other countries, in which their registries had been re-delegated to ensure better competition and management.
• There is still the question of dotPH adequately addressing the potential security vulnerability.

Can dotPH pivot?

Domains have been the bread and butter for dotPH. The company has also serviced enterprise communication needs through its sister company the Email Company (EMC), which offers ISP services and email to corporate clients. However, in the past years, the company has tried to offer different online, web and mobile services, that in my opinion were ahead of their time.

For instance, there was the dotPhone effort. “PH” can be considered to represent “phone” and Joel and co thought it would be a good way to set-up a unified point of contact, with your PH domain eventually replacing your phone number. Critics were vocal against dotPhone, as it would dilute the sovereign value of the PH as a Philippine-specific TLD.

Then there was i.PH, which started out as a blogging service, and eventually pivoted to a social network aggregation service. The service was unable to compete with the likes of WordPress.com, and then eventually social networks like Facebook and microblogs like Twitter.

Joel also mulled developing a location-based service, where we would input GIS information onto satellite imagery. Businesses and individuals could then use the service to navigate and look for local establishments and businesses. Instead of spending millions to acquire data, Joel wisely decided that Google would eventually take over the space once Google Maps gets Philippine data — and it did!

The question here is whether dotPH can innovate? If we take out control of the registry — and dotPH remains a registrar — will the company still thrive amid competition? I would think so. Joel is no stranger to the startup culture, having bootstrapped the dotPH business after his stint as a developer at the Valley in the ’80s. But perhaps with the status quo, dotPH has not truly found a need to innovate. Will a re-assignment be the catalyst?

Why this is important

In the case of Sulit, it’s a matter of their being unable to render their services because dotPH’s own services supposedly failed. Being an e-commerce site — and the #1 Philippine website as per Alexa — I can only imagine how much revenue was lost in the one to two days the site was offline, from the point of view of sellers. The site also earns from ads, and downtime would have an effect on its own revenue stream, and that of advertisers.

For the rest of us, the standing concern here whether it is viable to get a PH domain for your company or web service, given the potential security flaws. I can name a few startups and publications that have chosen to go for a PH domain, such as Tripid and Webgeek. Even torrent search site KAT.PH has chosen to go the PH route (although the reason behind this can possibly be explained in another post).

Sure, you can go for a .COM domain instead. But if .PH were cheaper and more secure, would you go for a PH domain?

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Lazada Receives $26M From Summit Partners, Has Now Raised Over $100M in 4 Months

Rocket Internet’s Asia-oriented e-commerce site Lazada announced yesterday that the company received $26 million in funding from equity investor Summit Partners. The money will be spent on further business development in its five markets: Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines, Vietnam, Thailand. Maximilian Bittner, the regional CEO of Lazada, adds:

We are very proud to have an investor of Summit’s calibre joining our shareholder base. They have extensive experience in supporting fast‐growing companies which will be of huge benefit as we continue to build out our offering and services to win the Southeast Asian market.

Lazada launched its new fashion marketplace platform in Malaysia on November 21st. The platform allows offline retailers control over logistics and operations while selling their items online. The company plans to introduce this platform to its other four countries in the near future. It’s an interesting diversification, especially as Rocket Internet already has its own Southeast Asia-oriented fashion e-tailer in the form of Zalora.

This is the third major investment that Lazada has received in the past four months. Previously the e-commerce site received $40 million from Swedish investment firm Kinnevik, and before that an undisclosed investment rumored to be in the region of $50 million from J.P. Morgan.

[Source: TechCrunch via DailySocial]

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China-Based Wine E-Tailer Vinehoo Raises Funding For its Flash Sales

Being big fans of both alcohol and startups, we’re pleased to hear of yet more funding for a Chinese wine e-commerce site. This time it’s Vinehoo that has pulled in RMB 5 million (US$800,000) – though the investor has not been revealed.

Vinehoo’s funding news comes just a few days after the launch of China’s priciest and glitziest online wine mall, and three months after a much more substantial $32 million in investment for rival Jiuxian.

But Vinehoo is different from those others in being as much a social network as a B2C e-commerce site. Indeed, it started in 2008 as an online forum for wine connoisseurs, and its premium wine sales only began in 2010. The site does limited-time flash sales, which help to reduce costs both for itself and for consumers. Now the site has over 100,000 users, and it’s on course to bring in RMB 10 million ($1.59 million) in sales revenue in 2012.

A flash sale of wine on the Vinehoo site. Click to enlarge.

That’s not a huge amount, and perhaps all its figures would be higher if the website focused more on its flash sales, and less on news and user-generated content. Indeed, it might escape the notice of new visitors that Vinehoo even sells anything.

In terms of flash sales of good wines, Vinehoo is up against more focused opposition, such as Moooton and TasteV.

Sales of alcohol online is expected to reach $2 billion in China by 2014.

[Source: 36Kr - article in Chinese]

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Indian government gave over $150 million to states for technology in schools since 2011

The Indian government has spent nearly $150 million in 2011-12 and the current year so far under the centrally sponsored scheme for ICT. The government on Wednesday said that the ministry of human resources development has approved coverage of 96007 Secondary and Higher Secondary schools under the ICT for schools scheme till date.

During the current Financial Year nearly $20 million have been set aside to cover students belonging to the scheduled caste and scheduled tribe, the government said.

A separate program called Computer Aided Learning (CAL) is under implementation for the Upper Primary Schools for the students in the age group 6-14 years. Nearly a lakh upper primary schools have been covered under CAL until now.

Under the Scheme priority is given to educationally backward blocks and areas with concentration of scheduled caste, scheduled tribe, minority and weaker sections. However, separate allocation for scheduled caste and scheduled tribe has been started under the scheme from the Financial Year 2011-12.

This spend does not include what the state governments spend on ICT in schools. During the recent state elections, various political parties have promised to give away laptops and tablets to students.

The Indian government has also been trying to get the low cost tablet project Aakash of the ground to improve ICT adoption in schools. However, the project has been mired in controversy and has faced delay and supply issues.

Recommended read

Dear Mr Tuli, we’d be grateful if you could start shipping: An open letter to Datawind CEO

Where is Aakash, the “Indian Innovation” made? Well, mostly outside India

Android based Aakash 2.0 launched, costs about approx $20 for students

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Rakuten Rolls Out ‘Smartpay’ Mobile Payments Solution

I suppose given that many other companies have already launched smartphone payments solutions in Japan already, it should come as no surprise to see Japan’s e-commerce giant Rakuten (JSD:4755) jump in the game as well. Paypal previously announced its Paypal Here card reader for Japan back in May, and local startup Coiney has an offering too.

Rakuten’s new ‘Smartpay’ service includes, like the alternatives mentioned above, a hardware component that is plugged into a smartphone’s headphone port. You’ll need to have either the iOS or Android apps (see screenshots below) installed on your phone in order to accept payments by credit card, which are swiped through the attached card reader. Customers can also sign their names on the smartphone display to complete the process (see below). Rakuten will take a 4.9 percent transaction fee on each payment.

Both the hardware and software are free for merchants, although there’s an initial cost of 2,890 yen.

Earlier today we heard news from Rakuten that it would begin selling its Kobo Mini e-reader in Japan on December 18. [Via Techwave]

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Timesdeal defends move to make deals free [Interview with Ninad Takpere,Business Head,Timesdeal]

While pundits debate over sustainability of deal centric business models, some still believe that there is enough space in the segment as Indian consumers continue to hunt for value.

One of the proponents of the deal business, Times Internet Limited, which runs Timesdeal.com, had earlier turned the business upside down by making it free for consumers.

Until then, deal sites used to charge customers upfront so as to avoid the hassle of collecting money from individual merchants later.

The Indian deal space has seen frantic activity in the last few months. Crazeal (previous Indian arm of Groupon) rebranded as Groupon.co.in after resolving prolonged legal dispute over ownership of domain name. The Chicago based company recently launched TV commercials too.

To figure how it panned out for Timesdeal, NextBigWhat spoke to Ninad Takpere,Business Head,Timesdeal. According to Takpere, since rollout of free deals in October, the company witnessed a 4x growth in terms of user visits and crossed 2 million users mark last month.

While Google trends which shows the search volume via Google search engine  suggests decline of Timesdeal’s search volume, Alexa shows that the sites traffic has gone up by more than 160 % in the last 3 months. Edited excerpts from the interview:

NBW:Share some response of Timesdeal in terms of traffic, conversion and confidence of consumers after making it free.

NT: Ever since we launched Free Deals in Oct ’12, we witnessed tremendous surge in consumer interactions on Timesdeal.com. We have grown 4 times in terms of user visits only in last couple of months and crossed 2Mn mark last month. The consumers are far more excited and engaged. We witnessed over quarter million deal vouchers being taken by consumers during the festive period. Timesdeal subscribers saved over Rs. 100 crores by now through the deal vouchers they took from our site. This is hell lot of value that we are able to deliver to our consumers. All of this gives us lot more confidence in the directional change that we adopted and we will strive hard to quickly scale it further.

NBW: During an earlier interaction with NBW, Satyan Gajwani the CEO of TIL said that you are still figuring out the business model. Can you bring more clarity to that?

NT: Honestly we are still in the phase of building meaningful interactions between consumers and merchant and help many more of them discover far more exciting deals. What we are pretty clear of is that we would like to build Timesdeal.com as a strong platform that facilitates consumers to grab fabulous deals and merchants to promote their offerings in easiest way possible. We are taking early steps towards attaining that. We would like to reach a benchmark level from this perspective before start toying around with different monetization opportunities those could be available. For us the current focus is to get the product right and build a superior destination for end consumers to discover & avail things of their interest and liking.

NBW: Based on your analytics, how are merchants taking to it?

NT: The earlier experiments had given us some insights to take up this change but last two months have been very exciting for us since consumer’s response has been beyond our expectations. We are able to deliver over 10 times the results to our merchants with the help of free deals consumers. More often now, we have to take the deals out of our site since they get sold out in matter of no time. Though the redemption ratio has taken a beating, in absolute terms we are delivering far bigger results to our merchants in shorter period of time which is the success story. We are experiencing larger number of happier merchants who are willing coming back to us with renewed deal campaigns.

NBW: Timesdeal now collects no upfront payment. So in what way has the decision affected Timesdeal? What are the redemption percentages like?

NT: It was not easy to make the decision on sacrificing the core revenue stream which was 20-40% of the deal value coming to us upfront. Though we have done away with this significant revenue we are able to get lot more interested consumers coming to our site looking for free deals and larger no of merchants willingly participating on the platform looking for new customers. This is quite a powerful proposition that we are able to make to both the parties. While consumers get free deal vouchers from our site, they are not worried about committing to something they’ve never had before and yet know that these vouchers will always be honoured. These are exclusive deal vouchers and not coupons which are otherwise available everywhere. We get to see that there are merchants who got as high as 90% vouchers redeemed by consumers at the same time few merchants are happier even with 30% redemptions with dozens of consumers. We are further strengthening our platform & working far more closely with merchants to enable consumers to redeem the vouchers seamlessly. The fact that most merchants are willing to renew their deal campaigns now with us is the testimony of free deals working for them to get increased business.

NBW: What is your outlook on deal centric business models in India in 2013?

NT: From Indian context, there has been and continues to be demand for consumers to get value. ‘Save money’ is imbibed into every Indian consumer right from early days of his life and all of us look out for deals to do so. Most deal sites have been facing challenges in terms of a revenue model that makes sense to consumers, merchants and them. We expect many deal sites to innovate further in this space or pivot towards product ecommerce that has been a trend which may continue next year too. Many will chase to become aggregators in the space by leverage e-commerce site coupons and act as customer acquisition platform for them. The next year is certainly going to be challenging in the deals space since most of the sites would have made decisions on the next course of action looking at recent past & dynamics of the deal sites in developed nations.

NextBigWhat for Timesdeal?

Timesdeal made deals free for consumers, however, we don’t understand the logic behind dishing out free deals. Usually, a free model is adopted by businesses to drive sales for shorter period of time [ like festive sale, occasional freebies]. Will Timesdeal’s free to all move work? Will it address or even create a totally new segment in the market?

Here is what Ankur Waikroo, CEO, Groupon India had to say

Honestly I don’t know what to make out of this. We (Groupon) are not in any panic mode – not even close to it. To be frank – and this might seem to be a little boasting around – we are not deterred by the Indian players or the hoopla they create around zero deals. It is not the zero deal that matters, it is the service that does. It is the experience that matters and that is what the customer will always go back to. It is definitely an advantage to the customer as long as the deal has nothing hidden and the experience is great. However, the question always is ‘are you doing something that you can do forever or is it a gimmick or a short term effort that cannot be sustained? And will your customers still come back when you offer something for a higher charge?’ For me it is a marketing campaign and if it is their business model I cannot really comment on it. We wouldn’t do it till the time it is sustainable.

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Touchten’s Infinite Sky Set to Launch for Chinese and Japanese Markets

Indonesian game developer Touchten’s flagship game, Infinite Sky, which has garnered more than one million downloads and 200,000 daily active users, has managed to break even on revenues from the game in November. Rokimas Soeharyo, the co-founder of Touchten, then told us that the studio is going to localize the game for the Chinese and Japanese market, and the updated iOS version should be available this week for both markets. But we’ll need to wait around two to three more months for the Android version in those languages to arrive.

Roki explained that the localization efforts for the Chinese version of Infinite Sky will go beyond language translations and a local ad network. The game will have social integration with Weibo and QQ rather than Facebook and Twitter. Then they are also open to possibility of localizing the game’s story as well to make it more relatable to the Chinese market in the future. He said that the Japanese version would only receive language translations and not support for homegrown social networks like Mixi.

Roki noted that they are partnering with Chinese game publisher Yodo1 for the Chinese launch. He mentioned several benefits that they’ll get from this partnership, which includes Infinite Sky being featured in several third-party app stores, and intellectual property protection. The team is also working on the sequel of Infinite Sky at the moment, and the game should be available in mid 2013.

Besides China and Japan, Touchten is looking to make its presence felt in South America as well. The game developers are now working on a football game for the upcoming 2014 World Cup in Brazil. He told me that they are working with a legendary Brazilian footballer for this game. Roki notes:

The Brazil mobile market is a huge and growing market, and we would like to seize the opportunity sooner rather than later. There are over 19 million smartphones in Brazil. This football game presents a great opportunity to tap into those users.

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Firmzen wants to be the Asana (workspace) for Chartered Accountants

Offline businesses in India are a huge opportunity for startups to tap into and while some of the segments like Doctor Appointment booking is really seeing a lot of traction, there lies a huge opportunity in segments that service the SMEs/consumer segment.

Firmzen is web-based practice management / office automation software for finance and legal professionals – Chartered Accountants, Certified Public Accountants, Company Secretaries, Tax Consultants. Think of Firmzen as a “Basecamp” or “Asana” or “Practo” for a Chartered Accountant firm.

 

Important to note that Firmzen is NOT an accounting or taxation software – but is a workspace/project management tool totally customized for CA segment.

How did it start?

Started by Sameet Singh, Amith George, Noel Sequeira who are computer science engineers from the University of Mumbai. The team previously founded and ran IT energy management / monitoring startup Enpower (http://enpower.in) for 3 years.

While working on our previous venture, we were approached by a Chartered Accountant who asked us to help develop a custom practice management solution. Since we did not take up bespoke software development at the time (we still don’t), we instead played a pro bono consulting role and tried to integrate a few web-based SaaS task tracking / calendar-based tools to help address his firm’s needs. As we spent more time communicating with his team and understanding their requirements, a very specific set of those stood out and it became apparent to us that it would be impossible to meet their needs using generic project management / team collaboration apps.

With the previous venture headed towards an exit, we set out to validate whether this problem was more widely applicable. With just the concept and a few paper mockups, we met about 25 CAs to try and understand their problems. We decided we’d work on Firmzen only if it figured among their top 5 problems. The concept resonated with them – many of them had already cobbled together duct-tape, in-house solutions with excel sheets and daily (manual) status-of-work emails. But these attempts couldn’t scale, and they found it frustrating. Some of the larger firms had even invested in custom, in-house software solutions.

Following a MVP approach, the team identified practice management as a problem that CAs were willing to pay to have solved, we focused on distilling the solution down to a minimum, critical feature set that would make an impact on a CA’s day to day work life. And this, essentially, is Firmzen in its current avatar – 1) a daily planner that’s auto-generated from your compliance calendar 2) SMS and email reminders to customers 3) bills that get auto-generated on completion of work.

It’s still early days for Firmzen and while the team hasn’t yet decided on pricing front, what’s commendable is that are NOT trying to be the be-all for CA segment (i.e. not building a bloated piece of software), but are targeting a specific pain point which is common across the segment.
If you are a CA, do give Firmzen a spin and tell us whether it really serves as a zen for all your practice management needs.

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