An innovative startup ‘Pankh’ is here to change the way MSME businesses run and hold their forts

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Mr. Nadit Khatri

Mr. Nadit Khatri is here to conquer digitization barriers! MSME business owners can now experience simple and easy coordination and collaboration with Pankh. Read along to know about his trials and tribulations below.

A qualified B.Tech in computer science from the VIT University, Vellore, Mr. Nadit Khatri accomplished his Masters in Global Logistics & Supply Chain Management from the S P Jain School of Global Management. He was also engaged and interacted with multiple industry experts while completing two supply chain projects that are in the same domain as his startup Pankh across the Asia-Pacific, Middle East, and Australian belts that studied the contrast between how businesses ran traditionally to those with modern paradigms. But, things changed when he came back to India in 2019 from Singapore where he worked in the shipping industry. 

At the time of his return, Nadit’s father asked him to find a platform that helped him connect all the business tools/software i.e. Tally, Zoho CRM, etc. that he is currently utilizing all under one roof, so he has one place to view, monitor, and run his business from a single mobile or web application. Considering this, he got more and more engrossed in coming up with a viable solution. So, he began to help eminent CXOs launch their startup ventures. Working with Sangeet Paul Choudhary, one of the domain leaders who helped refine his knowledge and technical prowess in the platform business model domain. In tandem, he also helped conclude and establish his footsteps in entrepreneurship at the V@C acceleration program, a 4-month program with Viridian Accelerator Centre. 

The beginning of his journey

Mr. Nadit traveled to each district of India on his motorcycle and swept along diverse cultures. He has interacted with over 100 business owners, from small-sized corporations to multinational bigwigs all across the globe. These interactions revealed that most MSME business owners use multiple tools and software for performing different business applications and processes. A considerable amount of time was getting wasted in the coordination (of the work done & who is making what decisions) and collaboration (of how the data is being sourced & communicated within the organization & its stakeholders). 

The Current Position

Nadit and his team are currently working on the stages of development and launch of the platform. Pankh currently is part of the Sri Lankan Virtual 2021 program with The Founder Institute, the world’s largest pre-seed startup accelerator (a Silicon-Valley based program). 

The work goes to show that ideation itself took over 18 months to come to fruition. The primary challenge was understanding the processes, the customer journey, the pain points and their nitty-gritty. Next was having to approach the platform business model in breaking the chicken & egg problem of bringing together the supply side (the technological business tools ranging from accounting software to CRM to any SaaS applications) & the demand side drivers (the MSME businesses) onto the platform.

“The norm, so far, has been that a mobile or web application helps cater to a single process. The solution under the offer is a one-stop that integrates all the procedures on a single application.” 

What the future has in store

The plan, going ahead, is to create launch the product that also inculcates microservices that address the pain points of the masses. These shall include sending payment collection reminders or having order booking along with dealership portals, for example. Also, the service renderings shall capture the vernacular nuances through the inculcation of multiple local languages. 

Today even the roadside vendors are able to make digital payments using UPI, and it’s in a similar manner that we wish to make business process management simpler, accessible, and affordable for the MSMEs. Customer-centricity, localization, real-time sync, visualization, coordination, and collaboration shall simplify business operations. 

As far as it goes for India, running these tools through a single and unified place is still utopic. Customer feedback has kicked in and created rays of positivity. In short, it shows that the addressing and understanding of pain points had carried the right amount of empathy in offering credible and quality services and solutions. 

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