How much do you really know about the organizations or partners you work with?
With the advent of technology and information at your fingertips, one might think that they know enough.
But do you really?
It is easy to find information about funding, services or products an organization is offering. But figuring out financial information, like - how well a company is doing, what are their profits, what are their biggest expenses, etc. is privy to only a certain few, if at all.
Solving this very problem and providing high-quality information and data is Tofler. Tofler was founded by husband and wife duo, Anchal Agarwal, CEO & Founder and Parijat Garg, ex-CEO.
Their integrated business information and analytics platform help businesses make better decisions. This takes the guessing out of the equation and empowers businesses to be more sure of their course of action.
They are also one of our clients at FlexiBees, having hired a couple of team members. So we recently caught up with Anchal Agarwal, CEO and founder of Tofler. What ensued was an interesting conversation about the growing need for financial information, transparency and power of information.
Some excerpts from our conversation:
Can you tell us a bit about what you do? What services do you provide?
Tofler is a business that enables and empowers other businesses with critical information. We aggregate and analyze massive amounts of data to provide business intelligence. We pioneer in providing organizations with complete information that enables them to find opportunities and evaluate risks - all in one place on a single platform.
Our 360-degree view of businesses is formed by integrating and analyzing more than 100 authoritative information sources into a complete business profile - we look at various sources including the Ministry of Corporate Affairs, other governing bodies, regulatory authorities, social media, news and various other channels. Our machine learning technology, analysis algorithms and data visualization graphs help corporations answer strategic questions using information and not gut instinct.
How did you think of this need? What is your vision?
About six months into our marriage, we decided we wanted to do something together. With our varied backgrounds, we started thinking about how we could find something that could utilize both our skills.
I had experience working with mergers and acquisitions earlier and it gave me deep insights into this space. I knew the nitty-gritty of this sector. I knew what businesses were dealing with and how little information they had. Receivables, payables and bad debt are such a huge problem. And it can seriously affect small and medium-sized businesses.
So, we thought we could solve this problem by being that one platform that provides high-quality vital information and reshaping the Indian business ecosystem. We wanted to make it transparent and reliable. We wanted to create an atmosphere of trust and incentivize the businesses that were adhering to the ethical standards and policies and penalize unprofessional and fraudulent behaviour. This was our dream.
Who are the founders?
Tofler was founded by me and Parijat Garg. He has however moved on to other endeavours.
I am a Chartered Accountant, Company Secretary and LL.B. I started my career with PriceWaterHouseCoopers in the Mergers & Acquisitions division. That's where I learnt about the use of such information and the lack of good data.
Parijat Garg is a computer science graduate from IIT Bombay and CFA. His specialisation was building high-performance systems and managing huge databases.
We built Tofler with the thought of integrating both skills and using this crucial data to benefit the businesses. With our varied backgrounds, we thought this could be a perfect opportunity to do something meaningful and contribute to the economy of the country.
How has the pandemic affected your business?
We had a roller coaster ride!
We actually had made some drastic changes a few years earlier to the pandemic as we were facing a financial crisis. We were not able to generate enough revenue to cover our expenses and were not funded.
So we had to go back to the drawing board and take a hard look at how we were operating. One of our biggest learnings was to adapt to the need of the hour and work with a very lean team.
We gave up the lavish office we had and cut down our expenses. We started working out of a co-working space. This was easier and more affordable. It made me think about why we didn’t make this choice right from the start!
We built back up in a lean way. We worked with a select few who formed the core team and outsourced what we could. We hired experts who were our external partners but were not on our payroll.
All these changes fueled our growth, and expansion and improved our cash flows.
This experience helped us when the pandemic hit us and caught everyone unawares. We were able to quickly reduce expenses. I am happy to report that we worked throughout this period without having to fire any of our employees. And when things improved, we scaled up again. And in a way, this is where FlexiBees helped us tremendously. It fit in with our needs and philosophy beautifully.
When did you start seeing success? What was the turning point?
I think we really saw a turning point 4-5 years after the inception of Tofler.
We were able to do that because we changed our focus. In the initial years, we had the problem of choice. We had too much choice. We were catering to anyone who sought our services - banks, corporations, investors, etc. It felt like we were a bit scattered in our mindset and approach. We did not have a strong focus on a defined client segment.
When we finally made that choice, we started seeing the difference. We chose only to work with corporates. In this process, we were also able to constantly seek their feedback and build stronger products.
Once we made this choice, we started seeing success.
What is your differentiator?
One of the things I think that definitely makes us stronger as compared to our competitors is our team culture. We have an extremely strong team. We empower everyone in our core team to act as leaders and that really changes the tone of the organization. They are motivated, take initiative and lead their own functions by example.
Secondly, the quality of our information and data is unparalleled. We are the one organization in the market that does not offer discounts. We focus heavily on quality and accuracy. And instead of providing a laundry list of information, we understand our customers and make the information meaningful for their needs. We provide it to them in the way they need it, want it.
Can you share one success in the recent past?
I think the biggest success we have seen in the recent past is that all the national dailies take data from us! We are featured all across the media.
This has happened over a period of time as we built a reputation of high quality, transparency and accuracy.
Earlier to us, there was barely any financial news being published. Sure, we read about investors, funding, and such but analysed data about the financial performance of organizations was not available. I consider this our biggest achievement.
You have hired a couple of candidates from FlexiBees, in part-time, remote working arrangements. How has the experience been?
As I mentioned earlier, we were looking to build leaner teams that could enable us to scale up and down based on our needs. And FlexiBees empowers us to do this beautifully and effortlessly.
We hired a few team members from Flexibees. The pandemic also pushed us to consider remote working options as everyone was anyway moving back home.
The opportunity to hire flexibly helped us tremendously as we could experiment with the role and the person before hiring them full time. And honestly, sometimes, you don’t need full-time employees for certain roles. In these two ways, we found that working with FlexiBees was extremely beneficial to our business.
If you are a business owner or investor looking for accurate, high-quality information and data, do reach out to Tofler.
