Vaneeta Punchvedi | 22 Jul, 2015
I have dealt with a lot of early stage startups in the past and realized that most of them are not aware of even the basic regulatory and tax requirements. In some cases we noticed that the cost of delays far exceeded their initial revenues. These factors made us believe that we must create an awareness program which would educate the start-ups on their obligations and the methods to comply with the same said, Divakar Vijayasarthy, Co-Founder, MeetUrPro.com in an exclusive interview with SME Times.
Excerpts of the interview...
Please tell us something about MeetUrPro.com.
Divakar Vijayasarthy: Established in July 2014, MeetUrPro.com is India's first managed online marketplace for professional services. Started by Divakar Vijayasarthy and Rajesh Inbasekaran, MeetUrPro is a one stop shop for all professional, tax and legal requirements.
Headquartered in Chennai, MeetUrPro.com has a dedicated team of professionals and necessary proprietary technology to provide end-to-end services relating to personal and business taxation, real estate transactions, compliance management and setting up of a business among others.
MeetUrPro.com provides a reliable online avenue for professionals to expand their practice by connecting with businesses and individuals and offers compelling benefits and choices to customers to access and avail standardized professional services.
When was your 'Eureka Moment' regarding the idea of MeetUrPro? Any interesting anecdote that you can share, around this?
Divakar Vijayasarthy: In 2008-09 we launched our portal taxqbe.com for e return preparation and filing offline. Subsequently in March 2014 we launched mytaxmanager.in for offering online tax consultation and filing.
However, as we deliberated on the possibility of expanding the delivery team for multi-disciplinary consultation - we thought of bringing in multiple professionals as partners similar to a market place - hence the thought of MeetUrPro.com.
While discussing the model of my taxmanager.in, we felt we would be better accepted by the professionals if they feel we are partnering them and are doing some things for collective benefit of the professional community. Hence, we came up with the idea of a market place model for our platform MeetUrPro.com.
How MeetUrPro.com works? How you are different from other players in the market? Why would somebody want to prefer MeeturPro?
Divakar Vijayasarthy: MeetUrPro.com is a controlled online marketplace and delivery platform for professional services. On MeetUrPro.com one has access to services from professionals including lawyers and chartered accountants to meet their personal and business needs. Be it filing tax returns, adhering to regulatory processes, real estate transactions, such and many more services are provided by professionals pre-screened by MeetUrPro.
Every transaction on MeetUrPro.com is tracked for its deadlines and quality of service provided through a secure workflow management software (TIMI) ensuring trustworthy transactions across geographies.
MeetUrPro.com offers various services that are standardized with clear scope of work and time frame for delivery. All our products come with multiple pricing options - (industry first) - with varying price bands, so it allows the consumer to fix his price. Our delivery platform TIMI, significantly reduces initial engagement time. The operations team monitors every stage of delivery and intervenes when needed. Every transaction on MeetUrPro.com is tracked for its deadlines and quality of service provided through.
TIMI ensuring trustworthy transactions. Our prices are at least 50-60% cheaper than brick and mortar options. The company's domain capability and wide range of services and products aims to fill the void in today's marketplace as far as choice of options, pricing and organized scheme of delivery is concerned.
How is your experience with as a start-up company? Who all are your target audiences?
Divakar Vijayasarthy:We have had a roller coaster experience so far as a startup - the journey has been exciting though. Initially we had to convince the professionals to believe that professional engagements can be done online.
This took few months of efforts and awareness. However as time progressed and professionals started getting engagements - Meeturpro became a much more accepted option. Today we have more than 1000 professionals and the number is increasing. Subsequently our focus was on a product which is now 400+ with more than 5000 price listings.
Now we are focussing on targeting our consumer. Our goals at every stage of our existence were clear.
Our target audiences are -
- Salaried individuals / sole proprietorship - Personal taxation
- Online property buyers and sellers - Real estate
- NRIs and their families / Export oriented businesses and Tech firms - International taxation
- Any start up - Business start up services
- Companies/ LLPs/ SMEs - Compliance and regulatory services
- Individuals/SMEs - Deeds and documents
What is the idea behind launching Startup Clinic?
Divakar Vijayasarthy: I have dealt with a lot of early stage startups in the past and realized that most of them are not aware of even the basic regulatory and tax requirements. In some cases we noticed that the cost of delays far exceeded their initial revenues. These factors made us believe that we must create an awareness program which would educate the start ups on their obligations and the methods to comply with the same.
Is your start up clinic helpful for SMEs (Small and Medium) enterprises? Please elaborate.
Divakar Vijayasarthy: The Startup Clinic set up by MeetUrPro.com is designed to cater to the end-to-end needs of a Startup entity. Aimed at entrepreneurial ventures, the Startup Clinic provides access to legal and other professional service expertise to startups, which is essential to their business's long-term health.
The startup package offers all the required services for the business that will support them right from the incorporation stages to ongoing compliance requirements. The services include receipt of certificate of incorporation, PAN allotment letter, TAN, DIN, liaison for opening bank accounts, consultancy on VAT and Service Tax registration, RBI compliance for inbound investments, FEMA compliance for inbound investments.
What are your future plans for Startup Clinic?
Divakar Vijayasarthy: Given the initial encouraging response we plan to make it a regular activity in Chennai and possibility expand to Bangalore shortly. Overtime we want Startup Clinic to be an accepted synonym for nurturing startups in the area of professional compliance.
How you see the growth of your sector in our country? Please elaborate
Divakar Vijayasarthy: The professional services market in India- in our opinion is estimated to be USD 15Bn+ with a huge degree of unstructured engagements.
The tax payer population ratio in India is less than 3% while its 45% in US and 47% in UK. With a conservative GDP expectation of 8% and the increased pressure by the Finance Ministry to expand assess and compliance - we expect the compliance market to grow by a CAGR of at least 15-20% annually for the foreseeable future.
