ePaisa - Aims to Digitize India by Digitizing the Point of Sale for Businesses

In India, the Point of Sale industry is in a scattered state. Most of the big box retailers have access to it and small retailers find it too expensive. On the other hand, the penetration of debit, credit cards and mobile wallets is quite high and smartphone users have also grown exponentially. Given this scenario ePaisa has developed a mobile point of sale solution that is a smart business tool for business owners. ePaisa (POS) provides the tools businesses need by enabling their point of sale with acceptance of all forms of payment, inventory, digital receipts, analytics, VAS, marketplace integration and more. The startup believes that India will be truly digital only when business owners start to digitize their point of sale.

In an interaction with Sujata Sangwan of BWDisrupt, Siddharth Arora, Co-founder, ePaisa, shares his startup’s journey and future plans of the venture.

About ePaisa

ePaisa provides businesses the simplest and smartest way to build, manage, grow and create a better customer experience. With the ePaisa app, businesses are empowered to take care of their billing, manage inventory, accept all forms of payments (cards, wallets, cash, Bitcoins), reach customers and earn more to grow their business. Thousands of retailers, QSRs, exhibitors, highstreet stores and home delivery companies across India are currently advancing their business using ePaisa. Founded in 2012, with offices in Mumbai and New Delhi, ePaisa aims to digitize India by digitizing the point of sale for businesses.

Salient features of the ePaisa app:

Cash Register

Simple, powerful and secure, the ePaisa POS is designed to run on any smartphone or tablet. You can manage items, take an order, accept payments and send out digital receipts wherever your customers are. With its multi-lingual and customizable interface, it allows a merchant to track sales in real time and record transactions even without internet.

Payment Processing

ePaisa offers an integrated payment solution to accept any kind of payments – cash, card, credit (udhaar), meal vouchers, mobile wallets and Bitcoin. Pairing ePaisa with our card reader, merchants can accept payments from all major credit and debit cards.

Excellent Inventory Management with Alerts

It handles all your inventory needs by creating a great product library. You can add, edit or remove products in the app in seconds. It helps in creating categories and speeding up payments making it easier to keep track of all the sales. It lets you receive reorder alerts detailing items that are running low or out, saving time and space.

Customer marketing (loyalty & promotions)

ePaisa helps in engaging your customers by capturing and validating email addresses for email marketing, providing targeted promotions. You can customize your own loyalty programme and reward customers for their purchases, activities and more.

Cloud Based Reporting & Analytics

It helps in monitoring business growth by providing access to reports on sales, items, and customers all in one neat summary for any date range. One can access real-time data from anywhere making running business a location neutral activity.

Value-added Services

ePaisa enables all its merchants to accept bill payments, ticket bookings and mobile recharges. ePaisa also offers gift vouchers from 150+ retailers.

eCommerce made easy with ePaisa

ePaisa handles all the hassles of selling online. It automatically sync products, inventory, orders, and customers across marketplaces with ePaisa POS and accept payments and fulfill orders right from your phone. Through ePaisa you can sell online on Snapdeal, Amazon, Flipkart and offer to accept card payments on delivery using ePaisa card reader.

Multilingual

The app currently supports 36 languages with addition of some more languages on the cards

Differentiation factors

There is no similar product in the market which revolutionizes the entire selling experience for business owners. From payments, billing, inventory and loyalty to the ability to offer value added services to their customers - all through a mobile phone or tablet, it replaces the clunky old registers and gives business owners the ability to digitize their business It can be used for many different types of businesses.

Monetization model

ePaisa generates revenues from the following sources:

Monthly subscription- ePaisa works on a SaaS based model. With no heavy initial investments, you pay as you go, for the features you want to use.

Transaction Revenue- As an integrated solution, ePaisa offers you card and wallet acceptance capability without having to talk to any banks, at a flat transaction fee (usually much lower than you would get from a bank). ePaisa charges a transaction fee of 0.75%-2.25% of the total transaction amount for processing transactions and deposits the money into your bank account (With any bank) the next day.

Hardware Revenue- Hardware revenue includes revenue from sales of ePaisa POS terminal, ePaisa Readers and peripherals like wireless cash drawers, receipt printers and barcode scanners, all of which can be integrated with ePaisa register to provide a comprehensive POS solution.

Traction details

We have over 5,000 small businesses across the country using ePaisa for their daily business needs and will reach 25,000 merchants by the end of the year.

Marketing plans

We believe in educating the consumers, while we are reaching out to merchants through partnerships and associations. We are also focusing our efforts on digital platforms.

Challenges faced

Language was a barrier, to address that we created a multi lingual app.

Market size & opportunity

There are around 40 million SME Retailers in India and 1.1 million POS terminals of which 40% do not function properly. With the focus towards digital India and cashless economy the opportunity is huge and the right time to tap in.