bismo

Nearly 11 Million businesses in Bangladesh uses paper based and manual process to maintain their accounts, as a result they lose track of their financial data and expenses. Moreover, due to lack of proper financial statements, they also lose the chance of receiving loans from financial institutions. The reason not to use any accounting system is because of the complex processes of every existing accounting software.

In Bangladesh, market for accounting software is really small compared to other countries (excluding micro and cottage businesses). This is believed and trusted by most of the investors and founders. This is also a reason why we do not yet have any company like Zoho in Bangladesh. Some international companies are also non-operational in Bangladesh, such as, Xero or Sage. Whichever company is using an accounting system mostly chooses Tally- an international ERP software. Tally requires trained and experienced accountants to operate. QuickBooks, on the other hand, is used in Bangladesh but by very few companies. This is also because companies need QuickBooks certified accountants to use it. Currently, there are few local companies who are building accounting for Bangladeshi businesses, but they have mostly copied complex ERP models which is tough for the small companies to maintain without someone experienced in using ERPs. As a result, most of the companies opt out for paper based and excel based manual processes. 

I started my startup journey by building a healthtech startup at the very end of 2020. Since then, I have met a lot of founders from the country and got to learn from them how they run their businesses. Most of the founders and companies I have met always had some problem with their financial documents and banking. My personal mentor, who is a founder of another startup as well, one day explained to me how he manages 4 bank accounts; 2 are for the business itself. And I myself was also facing problems managing all the Excel files that were being made each month. So, as an initial solution I started building a NEO bank for businesses but as I started to get into the core of the services available in the market, I realized basic financial infrastructure is missing in the market. Therefore, in May 2022 I onboarded 3 customers (organizations) to test our accounting services. In 2 weeks, we built a few pages of interactive dashboards (non-functional) and showed it to 2 users. We took the feedback and in July 2022, we built an initial working version of our product. Gave it to 5 organizations to test. Through feedbacks we figured out that only accounting service is not what businesses are demanding. The product was not exactly what users needed yet. In August 2022 we added few more functions and gave it to more than 20 companies to test. In October 2022 we started to sell our product and the customers guided us what to build. Currently we are targeting manufacturing and trading-based businesses. 

bismo is a Financial Operating System to automate the processes of finance management in manufacturing and merchandising businesses by equipping them with web-based streamlined products which can be easily used by non-accountants. 

Currently we are streamlining supply chain accounting for manufacturing and merchandising businesses. The product helps businesses to manage bookkeeping, customers, suppliers, inventories, invoices and lets them track payables and receivables. Businesses are currently doing it manually using paper or Excel. Other similar products in the market have complex User Experience which requires training for the employees to use them. But we have designed the User Experience by following user’s natural flow of work. Such as, the user buys products from suppliers and then record it in Suppliers section, then they simply push it into Inventory and then they directly sell through Invoices. We have also designed the database following the users natural flow and pointed accounting specific data in a way that financial reports are automatically generated. This is possible because we have designed a process of automating double entry in accounting.

What we have figured out is that in Bangladesh, basic accounting is not something that adds value to the businesses. Businesses mostly rely on auditors to fix their financial reports at the end of every fiscal year. We must mention this process is costly. Bangladesh has been a business hub for centuries for its location and fertile lands. Bookkeeping has been mainly maintained manually. Moreover, businesses have been celebrating, for decades, a book closing event at the very beginning of the Bengali Year called “halkhata”. Changing a culture is not easy and changing traditional businesses in Bangladesh is close to impossible. But what we have found out is that this vast market is addressable only if we provide other value-added services rather than focusing only on basic accounting. Out of 11 million businesses, about 70% of businesses in Bangladesh are trading or manufacturing based businesses. They require inventory management, supplier payments management, regular bookkeeping and banking. 

From my point of view, Bangladesh right now is at an early stage of development. If you look at all the bigger startups in the country, you will notice that all have been building infrastructural services. We are still in need of basic infrastructures in the country. Therefore, we plan to build an infrastructure or an ecosystem of financial services for businesses. This will create financial inclusion for businesses saving them thousands of overhead cost and also help them raise investments/loans easily. 

I started my startup journey by building a healthtech startup at the very end of 2020. Since then, I have met a lot of founders from the country and got to learn from them how they run their businesses. Most of the founders and companies I have met always had some problem with their financial documents and banking. My personal mentor, who is a founder of another startup as well, one day explained to me how he manages 4 bank accounts; 2 are for the business itself. And I myself was also facing problems managing all the Excel files that were being made each month. So, as an initial solution I started building a NEO bank for businesses but as I started to get into the core of the services available in the market, I realized basic financial infrastructure is missing in the market. Therefore, in May 2022 I onboarded 3 customers (organizations) to test our accounting services. In 2 weeks, we built a few pages of interactive dashboards (non-functional) and showed it to 2 users. We took the feedback and in July 2022, we built an initial working version of our product. Gave it to 5 organizations to test. Through feedbacks we figured out that only accounting service is not what businesses are demanding. The product was not exactly what users needed yet. In August 2022 we added few more functions and gave it to more than 20 companies to test. In October 2022 we started to sell our product and the customers guided us what to build.

We serve 3 businesses at the time of this application. All 3 are startups and have a mix of manufacturing and merchandizing businesses.

We are developing "bismo" to help MSMEs worldwide to help them manage their finances and streamline their supply chain accounting better without the help of any accountant. This will help these businesses to be more financially strong. 

Through the help of Solve community and partners, I believe, we will be able to scale our services to different communities and countries for maximum impact. Solve will also be able to help us design proper impact measurement processes.  

Users now use paper and Excel to maintain their accounts. Few businesses use other software and apps, but that number is small because maintaining those requires accountants.

I have faced two users who have similar problems. They have good number of Suppliers and buys several products from them which are then recorded into inventory. One user currently manages this process through Excel, and another uses QuickBooks. They manually track their sales and then manually synchronizes the data with the inventory. The main problem arises for them when they start syncing files. They mostly have different sheets for different months and lose track of products or sales data. One of the users showed me how he calculated wrong sales revenue for a product due to several Excel files. Another user showed me how he must email 100s of invoices every month to their corporate clients built against the inventory. I have seen stacked paper invoices in his office. It is like a nightmare for him to track all the due invoices every month. 

In Bangladesh we have 11 Million SMBs (small and medium sized businesses) but there is no specific financial infrastructure for these businesses. Building an automated finance management service will change the life of these businesses and founders. 

- Make MSMEs more financially strong 

- Build financial inclusion for manufacturing and merchandizing businesses 

- Help businesses to access loans through structured financial data

Our service follows SaaS model where our users pay a monthly fee to use our services.

We have and are raising investments to run our company for now. But we also plan to reach profitability in future and generate our own expenses.