Meet the Bookkeeper to India's MSMEs

Tally Solutions' accounting software is used by one in every four MSMEs. Now, it is gearing up for the AI age

- Leslie D'Monte

In the dying days of 2024, Bench Accounting, a Canadian software-as-a-service (SaaS) startup that offered accounting and tax reporting services to small and medium-sized businesses, went belly up.

Given its high-profile backers, the shutdown came as a shock. Over the years Bench had raised $113 million from various investors, including marquee names such as Shopify, Bain Capital Ventures, and Altos Ventures.

The abrupt shutdown left thousands of small and medium businesses that used Bench's software in the lurch, with their accounting and tax documents stuck. Hours earlier, its website had boasted that the company had over 35,000 small business customers in the US alone.

Fortunately for the company's clientele (and its 600 employees), Bench was snapped up within days by Employer.com, an American HR company, assuring them of a seamless continuation in services, and a happy new year.

Bench's quick rise and overnight demise serve as a cautionary tale for startups using venture money as a steroid. India, too, boasts of a company that, like Bench, provides bookkeeping software to small businesses. However, unlike the Canadian company, it has grown on its own steam, bootstrapping itself from the day it started out 40 years ago.

That company, Tally Solutions, has stayed the course over those four decades. The Bengaluru-based business management software maker, which recorded ₹625 crore revenue in FY24 from over 7 million customers, has now embarked on its next phase of growth.

Tally will have to fend off many Bench-like challengers on that journey—startups fuelled by venture money and artificial intelligence (AI), and looking to take the express elevator to success.

Bharat Goenka, co-founder of Tally Solutions, says that it is ready to take on the challenge from the new age accounting software entities, emphasizing that while the company is 40 years old, it still has a startup mentality.