MagentaBi: A startup with a mission to help SMEs grow with actionable analytics.
Magenta Connect Pvt Ltd is a company whose mission is to analyse and present data in a way that inspires action and leads to growth. The founder is a Chartered Accountant with over 17 years of business experience and the co-founders has an educational background in software with a cumulative experience of 30+ years of the core team in SMEs.
The initial life story
In an interview, Vikas tells Startup Times, "I have been associated with iBall since 2001. By 2008 I was already leading a large sales and admin team across multiple states. This is when Vikalp also joined. While working together for more than 10 years, we used a lot of analytics to penetrate the market."
The duo found their goals in common and decided to work together.
The Idea
In 2018, they noticed something interesting. They discovered that not only their company but their distributors too, were struggling with ERP/Excel reports. And, all the generic BI solutions were not effective.
Meanwhile, Vikalp came up with a prototype and luckily 3 customers confirmed the order. They were pleasantly surprised. How a simple, delightful and effective BI can empower SMEs!
So, after many meetings and many more tea discussions, they came to the observation – People don’t want a heavy tech loaded solution. They want BI that can integrate with their accounting ERP and a team that understands their business will enable them to grow.
It was time to bring technology in a way that people can use easily and effectively, time to present and analyze data in a way that inspires action and leads to growth.
So, finally they decided to go with the idea and their startup took birth.
Challenges
Talking about challenges, they said, "Building a team, acquiring customers and managing finance are all the challenges which we face. But, we were fortunate to get help from so many people to keep pursuing our dream."
Things that kept them going
They mentioned, "Our mission that SMEs should not struggle with data, helped us to focus on what we should keep doing.
Our initial set of customers gave us a very encouraging response which motivated us a lot."
Present situation & future
Talking about the present situation they mentioned, "We are now serving all metros and plan to expand our network of customers and affiliate partners across India.
In 3 years we plan to serve 10K SMEs with Actionable Analytics."
A word of advice
On asking for advice they said, “We can’t give business advice to the SMEs, but what we have learned from our experience is that if a business driver has the right data In front of them, they make more growth-enabling decisions and minimise wrong decisions.”
