Chennai-based MeetUrPro takes care of all legal professional services for startups
Lack of awareness of basic regulatory laws and taxations has led early-stage startups to face dilemmas from various business perspectives. Sometimes, the cost of delays has far exceeded these startups’ initial revenues. Thus, creating an awareness platform is the need of the hour, in terms of educating startups on their obligations and providing them methods to comply with the same.
In July 2014, Divakar Vijayasarthy and Rajesh Inbasekaran founded MeetUrPro, a one-stop shop for all kinds of tax and legal requirements. The startup is headquartered in Chennai.
MeetUrPro has so far built a dedicated team of professionals, and has the proprietary technology required to provide end-to-end services relating to personal and business taxation, real estate transactions, compliance management, and setting up of a business.
Divakar Vijayasarthy, Co-Founder, MeetUrPro.com says, "MeetUrPro.com provides a reliable online avenue for professionals to expand their practices through connecting with businesses and individuals. It offers benefits and choices to customers, and allows them to access and avail of standardized professional services."
Addressing startups’ business needs
MeetUrPro.com is a controlled online marketplace and delivery platform for professional services. The platform meets both the personal and business needs of startups, by allowing them access to professional services, such as filing tax returns, adhering to regulatory processes, real estate transactions, and many more.
Vijayasarthy states, "Every transaction on MeetUrPro.com is tracked. Deadlines are adhered to, and high-quality service is provided through a secure workflow management software (TIMI), thus ensuring trustworthy transactions across geographies."
MeetUrPro.com offers various services with multiple pricing options, giving consumers the flexibility to fix prices. Its delivery platform, TIMI, reduces initial engagement time, and the operations team monitors every stage of delivery, and intervenes when needed. According to Vijayasarthy, the services offered by MeetUrPro are 50-60 per cent cheaper than those offered by brick-and-mortar options.
The company’s domain capability and wide range of services and products aim to fill the void in today’s marketplace as far as options, pricing and an organized scheme of delivery are concerned. Today, MeetUrPro has 1000 professionals on its platform.
Being a serial entrepreneur
In 2008-09, both Vijayasarthy and Inbasekaran launched a portal called taxqbe.com for e-return preparations and filing offline. Subsequently, in March 2014, they launched mytaxmanager.in which offers online tax consultation and filing. After they deliberated expanding their delivery team for multi-disciplinary consultations, they thought of bringing in multiple professionals as partners, similar to a marketplace. Hence, MeetUrPro was born.
Startup Clinic
To cater to the end-to-end needs of a startup fraternity, MeetUrPro has initiated a Startup Clinic. Aimed at entrepreneurial ventures, the Startup Clinic provides access to legal and other professional service expertise to startups, which is essential for their business's long-term health.
The startup package offers all the services required to support a business right from the incorporation stages to ongoing compliance requirements. The services they provide 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, and FEMA compliance for inbound investments.
Vijayasarthy says, "For the Startup Clinic, both online and offline, the initial consultation fee is zero. We guide customers in picking and choosing those of our products which would be required for their stream of business. The prices are market-determined, and we do not have any say in them."
For professionals like lawyers and chartered accountants, online engagement has come as a boon, and as a completely new avenue for getting clients. Unlike physical engagement, comprehensive online platforms make the entire payment process hassle-free.
Vijaysarthy elucidates, "Professionals in India are prohibited, by their respective governing statutes, to share their fees with non-professionals. Hence, MeetUrPro does not charge any fee from the professional. We have a small mark-up over the fee charged by the professional, which we collect from the client."
Spreading wings
MeetUrPro intends to make Startup Clinic a regular activity in Chennai and is planning to expand to Bengaluru shortly.
Vijayasarthy says, "We want Startup Clinic to be an accepted synonym for nurturing startups in the area of professional compliance."
Finally, one's entrepreneurial journey cannot be accomplished without having any valid revenue model in place. So MeetUrPro earns a six-10% margin once the deal is made between startups and professionals. By the end of March 2016, the startup plans to touch a revenue of about half a million dollars.