Bangalore-based Blueleaf Software Technologies Pvt. Ltd, which operates a cloud based SaaS platform called Weballigator for providing HR software to small and medium enterprises (SMEs), has raised $375,000 (around Rs 2.5 crore) in angel funding from a bunch of angel investors and high net-worth individuals (HNIs).
Joseph Rasquinha, co-founder and CEO, Weballigator, told VCCircle that the funds raised will be predominantly deployed in marketing initiatives, besides product development. However, he declined to name the angel investors or HNIs.
Weballigator is also looking to raise $2-4 million in its pre-Series A/Series A funding round to scale up faster, he said adding that it is already in talks with potential investors for this.
Founded in 2012 by Rasquinha, Raju Monga, Zaheer Hussain and Syed Hussain, Weballigator offers a suite of cloud based SaaS (software as a service) products for SMEs that include attendance management, performance management, leave management, finance management, payroll processing, administration management and CRM. While the startup offers a suite of products, its flagship product is the GPS-based real-time attendance system for employees, whereby employers can track their whereabouts in real time.
“In the Indian SME scenario, particularly the ones untouched by technology, attendance is a pain point,” said Rasquinha.
Weballigator is targeting SMEs, particularly those at the bottom of the pyramid, which do not have a technology infrastructure.
Rasquinha said that his company’s products are ideally suited for SMEs operating in the services sector with 10-50 employees and involves a scenario where employees spend more working hours away from the office, in the field.
“This is a market that is highly untapped and unorganised, desperate to get a system. Setting up the software takes only 5-6 minutes. The product is platform-agnostic and works on desktop, laptop, tablets and mobile,” said Rasquinha.
Though the company was founded in the middle of 2012, the startup took about two-and-a-half years to develop the product and test it with about 4027 clients. The product, which was rolled out commercially four months back, costs as low as Rs 10 per day for a company with 50 employees, according to Rasquinha.
Currently, the startup has 60 paying customers for its products and hopes to take this number to 100 by the end of this month. Weballigator has gone for a revenue sharing model with its channel partners. It has on-boarded 15 channel partners who have brought in about 10 customers in the last two weeks. Most of its current customers are in the logistics, courier and retail space.
“They are not channel partners in the strictest sense of the term,” said Rasquinha. “They could be entrepreneurs themselves in the field with the potential to bring more customers. They could also be our customers.”
Weballigator hopes to have about 1000 channel partners by the end of this year, who, in turn, should bring at least 3000 customers, he added.
The company hopes to achieve break-even within the next six months and is targeting $1.2-1.5 million revenue by the end of 2017.
