Kylas: Helping small businesses fast-track their digital journey

Ketan Sabnis,

With the COVID-19 pandemic impacting all human activity, it has become an imperative for small and medium businesses (SMBs) to have a digital-first strategy for business continuity and resilience. However, implementing this strategy is easier said than done. Lack of accessible technologies, shortage of digital skills and cost constraints are the key challenges faced by them.

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Pune-based Kylas.io is trying to make a difference here. It is a new-age, software-as-a-service (SaaS) CRM solution, designed to address these requirements of the modern SMBs. It is an enterprise-grade, easy-to-use, clutter-free, customisable and honest CRM, that is, “differentiated value-based pricing with no hidden costs,” says Ketan Sabnis, the company’s founder and CEO.

According to Sabnis, during the last one year SMBs in India have been severely impacted by the uncertainties of start-stop lockdowns, unreliable cashflows and disrupted supply chains. Covid-19 has forced SMBs to move to digital-first, becoming more dependent on technologies to ensure business continuity and resilience. SMBs face various challenges as mentioned earlier; Kylas was built to bridge this gap and to help SMBs to digitise their end-to-end customer journey. Growing businesses can benefit from its enterprise-grade CRM capabilities at an all-inclusive value-pricing.

Kylas was launched with a vision to make an enterprise-quality CRM software accessible to small businesses with a differentiated pricing of $99 per month with unlimited features, unlimited users and no hidden costs so that SMBs can focus on reviving their businesses without the additional burden of increase in technology costs. Its value proposition goes beyond providing just the tools to digitise businesses, says Sabnis, adding, “Our business experts are focused on empowering SMBs and partnering with them on their growth journey through the ‘SMB Upskilling’ initiative.”

“Over 80% of SMBs, in India, have faced survival and growth challenges due to the pandemic. The SMB Upskilling initiative aims to educate, enable and advise growing businesses about their digital transformation roadmap and operations,” says Sabnis. “This is a special 4-week programme, during which SMBs will learn about using technology and platforms for business continuity and resilience, marketing (including digital and social media), lead generation and overall digital transformation.” The programme will be led and conducted by the leadership team and subject matter experts at Kylas.

Kylas is currently bootstrapped and over $1.5 million of the company’s profits have been re-invested in it. The team wants to build and get to 1,000 customers before it looks for funding from any external sources. “Over 150 businesses have signed up for Kylas over the past few weeks leading up to the commercial launch and the plan is to clock 5,000 sign-ups by the end of the FY. There are over 2.5 million registered MSMEs in India and we plan to enroll 50,000 of them on our programme over the next three years. Our focus is to empower SMBs and create significant impact in India, before we plan to expand to any other geography,” informs Sabnis.