Intuit Inc. announced India-based Wealth Cafe Business Advisors Pvt Ltd as a finalist in its annual Intuit QuickBooks Global Firm of the Future contest, which seeks to find bookkeeping, full-service accounting and tax firms, who best embrace online technologies to grow their practices and help their small business clients succeed and prosper.
The Firm of the Future contest, now in its fourth year, invited bookkeeping, full-service accounting and tax firms in Australia, Canada, the United Kingdom, the United States and, for the first time, India to showcase how they see the value of the cloud, serve as a trusted advisor to their clients, and grow their practice with modern marketing techniques.
This year, firms were also asked to include a story of how they helped a small business client overcome a challenge and achieve success. Participating firms and the small business clients named in their submissions were entered for the chance at over Rs 97 lakh in prizes.
"We are delighted to announce Wealth Cafe as the first Firm of the Future contest finalist from India. By embracing the future with latest technologies to expand their role of being a trusted advisor, evolving their practices and growing their business in innovative ways, Wealth Cafe truly embodies what it means to be Firm of the Future," said Sanket Atal, Managing Director, Intuit India.
Founded in 2012, Wealth Cafe provides solutions to the challenges faced by SMEs in India in the areas of accounting, taxation, compliance, financial management and host of other management services. They help clients connect the dots and find the most appropriate solution with attention to detail while not losing out the sight of the big picture.
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Wealth Cafe provides clear, concise and practice advice based on in-depth knowledge of accounts, taxation finance and regulatory framework within which their clients operate and have a full understanding of their overall business objectives. Headquartered in Mumbai, they also have offices in Delhi NCR, Indore and Pune.
"We are excited to be selected as the first-ever Finalist for the QBO Firm of the Future from India. QuickBooks Online is central to our cloud-based service offering of anytime anywhere accounting. We love QBO's simplicity and their customer service has been impeccable. The government's push for #digitalindia and GST implementation is resulting in more SMEs joining the organized sector. We see new age advisors like us playing a big role in serving these SMEs in partnership with new age applications like QBO. For now, our eyes are set on winning the Global Firm of the Future 2018," said Harsh Vardhan Dawar, Founder and Director, Wealth Cafe Business Advisors Pvt Ltd.
The five finalists and the small businesses identified by each firm in their contest submission will each receive approximately Rs 3.6 lakh cash prize and one free ticket and an all-expense paid trip to Intuit's annual conference, QuickBooks Connect, November 5-7, in San Jose, California.
The grand prize winner and the small business they support will be revealed on the main stage on November 5, and will receive additional cash prizes of Rs 18 lakh and Rs 10.8 lakh, respectively.
Ariege Misherghi, Global Leader of Intuit's Accountant Segment, Small Business and Self-Employed Group and a panel of qualified judges from Intuit's global sites selected the top five finalists who best personify the attributes of Firms of the Future.
The top five finalists provided written submissions highlighting their firm's work, culture and vision to demonstrate why they deserve to be named as a Firm of the Future, along with their story about how they helped a specific client to succeed.
In addition to the top 5 finalists, Intuit also announced 10 runners-up across the five countries. The 10 runners-up will each receive a cash prize of Rs 1.8 lakhs and the small businesses identified by each runner-up will be awarded a cash prize of Rs 72,000.
The India runners-up of the contest are Balakrishna Consulting LLP and Jayabt S Ajinkya.
In the next phase of the contest, each finalist will develop a creative video that demonstrates what makes their firm a Firm of the Future. Intuit will provide a videographer and producer for filming and work directly with each finalist to develop a high-quality video entry.
Once complete, the videos will be available for public voting in an online gallery on the Firm of the Future website. Voting will begin on October 16 and will end on October 31. For every vote and social share that takes place during the voting period, a donation from Intuit will be made to Kiva.org worth approximately Rs 18 lakhs.
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