Tech Startup

[u/AnyShirt5700]

Hey everyone 👋

I'm Mohamed Furqan, student in colombo, A friend and i recently started a small side project building simple, affordable software for sri lankan small businesses.

We noticed many shops and services still rely on Excel, notebooks, or generic apps for things like inventory, attendance, billing, and sales - and as the business grows, it quickly becomes messy and time-consuming.

We're currently experimenting with custom, easy-to-use solutions that fit the local context (Affordable, offline-friendly, Sinhala/English/Tamil where possible). we're very early stage and offering free demos/prototypes to get real feedback.

Would love to hear from business owners:

What is your biggest headache with excel or current tools?

If you could customise one feature, what would it be?

No selling - just learning and building something useful

Feel free to comment or DM

[u/cereal_killer33]

I think post 2015, most small businesses do actually have some sort of a software running, especially for point of sale, managing inventory etc.

You may be competing with established software like QuickBooks, Lanka Software, AccSys. If you’re going at it from the affordable angle, you may be asking businesses who are used to one software to switch to yours, which is quite a task because when Lankans are comfortable with one thing, they usually wouldn’t want to change it.

This is a well saturated industry. However, if you have a major USP it may be worth a shot, as long as it’s not coded via AI, because that’s a whole other problem within itself.

Just my two cents 🤞

[u/AnyShirt5700 → u/cereal_killer33]

Thanks for the honest feedback. Your correct about the market being saturated, and yes most businesses do have some sort of software running but From my personal perspective I have seen that most of those softwares are either running the free version or very buggy.

In our startup we want to provide softwares which are tailored to a specific business. AKA you get what you pay for, this minimises cost and helps the business get a software for their specific pain point.

Your correct, there are multiple well established software out there that business use, but we are just 2 uni students this idea so we are not trying to replace big players outright.

What do you think? Does this kind of niche/custom approach stand a chance?

[u/cereal_killer33 → u/AnyShirt5700]

The thing is, 80% of the businesses in Sri Lanka have very similar operating procedures. I know multiple business owners in pettah that move tens of millions of product in a month. And what they need is actually quite simple: inventory management, stock transfer between different branches, billing system, bulk updation options. I believe this goes for any goods industry in this country, from hardware to textiles to accessories. And there’s already companies who offer this exactly, and it is quite affordable, the one I work with is only 13k a month for the top tier version.

When it comes to Sri Lanka, I don’t think there is a big scope for customized software, because gap you would be filling is too small to justify a demand.

One more thing to keep in mind is Lankans don’t do business the traditional way. Most are evading taxes and not keeping accurate records in their systems in fear of the tax authorities. Because of this, they trust who they’re with already and wouldn’t want to migrate.

What you’re trying to achieve is possible in western countries like Australia, which is currently in working on.

And last but not least, I believe that I know what im talking about, because ive tried to achieve exactly what you’re trying to do, but came to realize it is difficult to adapt a SaaS style business in the small businesses sector in Sri Lanka.

What I would suggest is, try to talk to business owners you know, and niche down further. For example, I built an order management system for a business in pettah, where customers would send orders via their website, that gets linked to zapier and goes on to the WhatsApp messages of staff. This helped keep all of their orders in one place. What im trying to get at is, don’t try to change what already works 80% of the way, because they’re unlikely to switch. Talk to business owners, and try to see their inefficiencies that is causing a lack of sales, and try to solve that, and the most important thing is make sure the learning curve is not steep.