Dell Startup Challenge winner Pazo helps align strategy and field execution for non-desk workforce

​​The term ‘frontline workers' came to the forefront during the pandemic, when millions of them continue to do their jobs despite the hardships and health risks. These hard working heroes helped keep us fed, picking up our trash, provided us with life-saving medicine, delivered our groceries and packages, prepared our food, cleaned their hospitals, cared for those who were most vulnerable, and kept us safe—often under not-so-ideal conditions.

PAZO, a task management software for the non-desk workforce is looking at making work more modern and convenient for this workforce with the integration of the best task management software solution and making routine operations efficient - all from a mobile device.

Pazo was created to deliver the promise of ‘peaceful operations’. The name Paz was derived from the Spanish word paz which translates to ‘peace’ while the ‘o’ stands for operations.

Pazo seeks to eliminate paper-based methods that dominate many businesses working with frontline workforces. This can slow down progress, cause errors, reduce efficiency and waste money.

These difficulties might have a substantial influence on an organisation's efficiency and profitability. However, with the correct technology, these processes can be streamlined, and productivity increased.

Paper-based processes can also hinder accountability and transparency, resulting in confusion, delays, and lower efficiency. Pazo’s digital workflows, task management, checklists and SOP management can aid in this situation for retail operations, facilities management or hospitality operations.

“We started building a simple MVP where people just tap on an NFC tag and collect data, then we realised it can be turned into a big opportunity. We made the software completely customisable within the software itself. We built a no-code tool when the word was not even in vogue,” says Sharjeel Ahmed, Co-founder and CEO, Pazo.

Today over 20,000 frontline workers use Pazo to get their daily tasks done. In fact, every five weeks a million checklists are submitted via Pazo, which counts brands like Bata, Jockey, TVS, Metro, and Sodexo (to name a few) as its customers.

The startup, which has raised $200,000 in a seed round, with a current Valuation of USD 5 million, has ambitious plans for the future - including expanding to the US.

“We are planning to integrate our software solution with IoT devices like temperature sensors, generator reading levels, floor temperatures etc directly from the devices themselves, and apart from this we have plans to implement Image recognition for the photos taken,” says Sharjeel, talking about product innovations in the pipeline.

“We are looking for markets outside India, starting with the US where there has been interest by a few retailers for a product like ours. We are finalising our GTM for the US markets and planning to scale our sales for that market,” he adds

Succeeding in a tough category like SaaS

Despite being a challenging category to compete in, what makes SaaS attractive is its predictable revenue stream, high growth outcomes and recurring nature of business. Sharjeel believes that deskless or the frontline workforce is under-represented when it comes to digitisation, which should work to the startup’s advantage.

“We are catering to an industry where tech penetration is at its lowest, people still use a pen and paper even today in this industry. If there is one vertical that could immensely benefit from digital transformation, this would be it. A lot of tasks which were being done manually, are now being done by AI. Similarly, we expect IOT devices to perform certain tasks or record data and send it to the various systems like Pazo,” he says.

“Our goal is to make Pazo as one of the defacto apps for the frontline workforce, just like how Hubspot is for marketing, Salesforce is for sales etc,” he adds, while submitting that awareness is a key challenge for the startup, which he believes can be easily overcome.

“One of the challenges of a product like ours is awareness that such a product exists, once people use it the first thing they say is, ‘Wish I knew this existed years ago,” he says.

On winning the Dell Startup Challenge Season 6

Pazo was adjudged as the first runner-up of the Dell Startup Challenge where it beat more than 1,600 entries to emerge as the grand prize winner of Rs 10 lakh worth of Dell Technology products and services and other perks. Besides winning the challenges, the startup has also accumulated a string of other wins including the Elevate Award by the Karnataka Govt, the NASSCOM Emerge 50 – League of 10 awards, and the Star Startup Awards.

“Our entire team was euphoric! A challenge with multiple rounds with some companies doing cutting-edge work, coming out top is a dream come true. This will bring us a lot of credibility in the market and of course we will use it to promote our product,” says Sharjeel, commenting on the win.

Dell Technologies offers startups like Pazo, which leverage technology to grow, scale and remain competitive, an array of flexible end-to-end hardware and software support to help it power its growth ambitions.

Companies like Pazo can maximise their productivity by focusing on their business strategy and outcomes as Dell Technologies caters to their need-based technology solutions.