Software company Zoho on Tuesday announced a new business division called Zakya which will sell point-of-sale (PoS) solutions to retail shops, “lowering the technology barrier” for small businesses.
"As consumers turn to online shopping, there is an increasing demand for digital solutions among retailers who want to stay competitive. However, the current solutions in the market either lack the necessary features to support retailers in their day-to-day operations or they are legacy software that are complex, rigid and have a steep learning curve,” said Jayagopal Theranikal, chief evangelist at Zakya.
“Zakya bridges this gap by offering an easy-to-use solution that can be deployed quickly, lowering the barrier to technology adoption for small businesses," he said.
Zakya is priced at Rs 649 per month and offers digital solutions for inventory management, omnichannel sales and other back-office tasks in 10 Indian languages: Tamil, Hindi, Telugu, Urdu, Malayalam, Kannada, Punjabi, Bengali, Marathi, and Gujarati.
“It can be implemented in under an hour for businesses with thousands of items in their inventory, and businesses that have fewer than a thousand items can start billing in under 15 minutes,” said the company in a presentation.
Zakya's web application helps businesses manage customer, transaction, and vendor information in one place without switching between multiple platforms, said the company. It has a PoS billing solution that allows enterprises to make bills even if their internet is interrupted. The mobile app allows businesses to create invoices and bill customers to reduce check-out time, during peak hours, said the company.
Zakya has integrated multiple payment partners, including Pine Labs, Razorpay, and PhonePe, for ease of billing. It can be integrated with shipment solutions such as AfterShip and EasyPost to fulfil customer orders, said the company.
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“The Indian retail market is projected to grow at a 25 per cent compound annual growth rate to reach a size of $1.1 trillion by 2027 and $2 trillion by 2032,” said Theranikal. Around 90 per cent retail shops in India are small or medium-sized businesses which are a “huge opportunity” for Zoho.
Zakya is used by more than 170 stores in the country and will expand to more places soon, said a company spokesperson.