These IIT Roorkee alumni are simplifying the SMB payroll process with a mobile-first SaaS solution

Maintaining attendance records, managing payroll and salary distribution, advanced paid, overtime, and bonuses records, among others, can be a cumbersome process if done manually in books or excel sheets.

For corporates and startups, with technology at their disposal, these processes are made very efficient.

However, with the low penetration of digitalisation and the unavailability of employment and payroll data among small and medium businesses (SMBs) and blue and grey collar employees, they find it difficult to avail of essential financial products such as loans and insurance.

To overcome these problems faced by SMBs, two 29-year-olds college friends and IIT Roorkee graduates — Nikhil Goel and Peeyush Goyal — built SalaryBox in 2020.

Headquartered in Gurugram, SalaryBox brings the broken process of maintaining attendance records, calculating salary, managing compliances, and processing salary payouts onto a single app.

Available for Android users at present, all these processes can be carried out with minimal user input. The startup is planning to launch its app on iOS shortly.

The USP

Nikhil says SalaryBox’s mobile-first SaaS solution automatically calculates salaries for different wage types after considering attendance, leaves, allowances, overtime pay, and salary advances, making it simple and convenient for millions of SMBs.

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Moreover, blue and grey collar workers can mark their attendance, check their attendance history, see the salary records, and download salary slips, creating a digital footprint, which they can use to avail loans and insurance products.

However, the app does not support payments yet. Nikhil says, “Tie-ups with banks for financial services and the option to pay salaries through the app are in the pipeline. We are working towards it.”

The team

Before starting SalaryBox, Nikhil worked with startups like Indifi and Practo. Peeyush — who has done his Masters from Carnegie Mellon University — had earlier worked with LeadGenius and Helpshift.

With a team size of seven members, Peeyush (CPO and Co-founder) handles the product and engineering verticals, while Nikhil (CEO and Co-founder) takes care of other business functions. 

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Funding and revenue

While the startup declined to share its revenue figures, it said its immediate source of revenue is its SaaS subscription model. At present, the app has over one lakh downloads on Play Store.

“We have recently launched the paid plan and are charging Rs 2,000 per year per SMB. For the future, our possible source of revenue could be selling financial services like salary advances and insurance for the blue-collar workers,” Peeyush shares.

With over 45,000 registered businesses, SalaryBox had raised an undisclosed pre-seed round in May 2021.

The round was led by GSF Accelerator along with marquee angel investors, including Alok Mittal (CEO, Indifi); Amit Ranjan (ex-Co-founder, SlideShare); Sumit Jain (Co-founder, CommonFloor), and Surjendu Kuila (Co-founder, Zopper). 

The future ahead

According to IBEF, India has over 63 million SMBs with more than 300 million blue-collar workers. In fact, there are nearly 400 registered SMBs globally. 

Moving forward, Peeyush says they plan to provide financial infrastructure for SMBs and their workforce. The co-founders plan on expanding to the following:

1. Salary advances and insurance

The Gurugram startup aims to partner with financial institutions to make salary advances available on its app. Further, the employee profile data collected on the app will be valuable to offer customised insurance products to blue-collar employees, claims Peeyush. 

2. Credit score provider

Based on an employee’s salary advance repayment behaviour and other employment-related data collected on the app, the startup plans on becoming a credit score provider for underwriters while also facilitating repayments by auto-deducting the repayment amount from an employee’s salary.

3. Professional identity

Several SMBs run background checks on new hires and store KYC documents for compliance purposes. Peeyush says the app will enable employees and businesses to store documents directly on the SalaryBox platform. 

It also plans to enable employees to use the app for identity and employment history checks with prospective employers.

SalaryBox competes with players like Pagarbook, Khatabook, and OKCredit, among others.