Information Madness

As I mentioned here earlier, I had a chance to talk to the founder of TaxYantra.com - Nitin Vyakaranam. I had a brief email interview with him yesterday. Here are the Q&As.

• 1. How the idea clicked?

Idea’s have many phases from initial brain wave to  finalized concept. The brain wave occurred due to the issues we faced during tax filing last year, further solidified as we progressed in our research that was  based on survey’s and focus group studies.

• 2. Background about you and your co-founders. Apart from ISB background.

Nitin Vyakaranam BE, MS, MBA
Nitin is an entrepreneur who has worked with many large and small companies, helping them innovate and develop new products. He has worked in many capacities in US and India. Nitin has a MBA from ISB.

Sunil Lingareddy ME, MBA
Sunil runs a diverse portfolio of companies that spans from pharmaceuticals to construction. Operational expertise he brings to TaxYantra would help us serve our customers very well. Sunil has a MBA from ISB.
 

 
Anant Nair BA, MBA
Anant comes from a marketing/advertising background. He has run marketing/advertising/branding campaigns for some of the biggest companies
in India. Anant has a MBA from ISB.

Nitin Gupta BE, MBA
Nitin has worked in the IT services and product industry in India and US for over 9 years. He manages the product management function at TaxYantra. Nitin has a MBA from ISB.

• 3. How does the application work? Specially once people are done filling

their  forms.
After you register and logon taxyantra.com you start answering questions about your tax status and information that includes
    a.. Personal information
    b.. Income information
    c.. Deduction information
After all this information is entered you can review your taxes and make payments. Subsequently you print out the ITR1/ITR2 forms generated by the system and sign it.

You can then choose to use our pick up and file service or self file. In case you want to use our services, our personnel will collect the signed form from you and complete the filing process.  Once submission is complete, acknowledgment is given back to you

Taxyantra provides logistics in following cities Hyderabad, Bangalore, Mumbai, NCR (Delhi, Gurgaon, Noida), Pune, Chennai. Users in US/UK can send the signed documents to our New York/London address. Users in other parts of the world can mail the tax form to our Hyderabad address directly

• 4. Challenges that you had to face tying up the application to IT department

We did not face many challenges, In fact the chief Commissioner of IT for AP, who launched the product was very happy with it.  We have got support from the IT department.

• 5. How is the company got funded? If you dont mind sharing this information

It is self funded. All of us have put our savings into this venture

• 6. Would you mind sharing your business model?

It is a transaction based model. Transaction here is one single filing. Users are charged for filing. Market segment is software companies, but we have been surprised by the response we have received for customers in other segments such as oil and gas , banking etc.

• 7. What do you have to say about the competition and herd mentality? You already have two competitor, yureeka.com an taxsmile.com

We believe competition is good, It really expands the total market.  The only way to beat competition is to constantly innovate, which we will do.


8. Any future plans?
The name of the company is Artha Yantra, taxyantra is our first product, we hope to come out with more financial services  offerenings.