With Gridle, you can manage everything on a single platform which helps in saving time and leads to efficient management. The platform targets medium sized enterprises in India with anywhere between 50- 500 employees and 3-4 offices across different locations.

Features:

As far as features are concerned, Gridle has very normal features that can be found on other sites such as File Sharing and commenting on each other’s posts, Messages, Events, Making Groups and assigning tasks, Announcements, Planner, Member dictionary etc. In a way it can be used as a social network for your enterprise which makes it a project and team management tool.

The visual of Gridle sets it apart from its competitors. It’s very intuitive, which makes it easier for a user to grasp how it functions and also provides pleasure to work with the software.

Story behind the Startup…

The father of one of the co-founders Abhishekh has a company that has about 100 employees. “They are facing a lot of problems as far as team and project management is concerned since everything is done on hardcopy of papers. We identified this problem and decided to work on it. However, we later found out that there are already such softwares available in the market. So we started using them but frankly speaking, we weren’t motivated to do so.” said Yash Shah, one of the founders of Gridle. According to him, a software that lacks intuitivity is a major problem. “When we checked the price of other softwares, they were priced around 5-8 $ for an employee per month. A company in U.S. may find such softwares feasible but currency conversion in India leads to problems for many medium sized companies.”

Gridle charges 20% of of what their US based competitors charge and is priced at Rs 50 (less than $1) per user per month.

Meet the Team!

Team Gridle

Gridle has been founded by Yash Shah, Abhishek Doshi and Anupama Panchal. There are 3 developers who are working full time with the team. The team also consists of a business mentor and a technical mentor. Gridle offers a winter and a summer internship every year.

At the initial stage, they wanted people to work with them but didn’t have sufficient money. So they went to local IT colleges and scouted interns. They go to 3-4 colleges and recruit 6-7 interns from each college which gives them 15-20 people to work with. From that batch, they select 1-2 people to work with them on a permanent basis and that’s how they have accumulated 3 developers from the last one and half years.

Feedback and Growth

Yash said that the software isn’t launched yet for public. They have 3 clients in Ahmedabad who are using it as of now. “The first version wasn’t as splendid as the current one and was extremely basic. At that point of time we were just focussing on the price factor. There was this one company where we convinced 20 people to use Yammer, free of cost as all the expenses were covered by us and at the same time we told those 20 people to use Gridle. We realized that people found both the softwares miserable. After that we tried making it visually appealing so that people could connect to the software and came up with some more advanced versions. The third version has received quite favourable feedback but there is still room for some improvement.” 

Before launching it for the general public, they want to make sure that everything is perfect without any flaws.

The Stumbling Block of the Journey

According to Yash, raising funds is the biggest hurdle they have faced. “When you tell an angel investor about your idea, they tell you to find a good team. If you have a good team and a good idea, they say they want to see a demo. After the demo, they tell you that you need to show them a paying customer. We have reached the paying customer part but I don’t know what will happen next as the entire process slows you down.”

Gridle’s advice to Budding Entrepreneurs

Give your best shot but never keep your hopes high. Don’t even think that you’re funded until you get the check in your hands!

Gridle won Rs 2.5 lakh, along with technology support, at the Microsoft BizSpark India Startup Challenge 2013 and that enabled them to speed up product development. They have been incubated at Indian Angel Network and are looking forward to a pitch at CIIE Ahmedabad very soon.

 Do visit their site! Gridle

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Micro business owners don’t need an intricate software program like Intuit or Tally and a CRM system to understand every minute detail about the customers. They just need something that helps them to do the basics. In short, they need a software that is simple to use, automates a lot of the time consuming tasks behind the scenes and helps them manage customers, sort out finances and introduce business to new customers.

Zoostr is designed to make all small business admin and marketing tasks as simple and as quick as possible so that business owners can concentrate on getting new clients and generating revenue. In this way a lot of valuable time can be saved and can be utilized for revenue generation by business owners.

Zoostr is a cloud based software which can be used by micro business owners like self-employed, freelancers, consultants, small scale businesses etc. Although there are various other business management tools, they don’t seem to be quite relevant to Microbusiness where the business is run only by a few people.

With just 3 clicks, the software helps you to create price quotations, invoices, supplier PO’s, manages your customer meetings and workflow and create SMS marketing campaigns. Its SMS marketing feature provides a simple to use SMS marketing tool that lets small business owners send bulk SMS messages for free to their customers to help drive new business.

That’s not all! The software is also mobile friendly and can be used on a Smartphone or a Tablet, which means you can perform work-related activities on the move and carry your business in your pocket. Most of the time spent on travelling is wasted and so the software provides an excellent opportunity to utilize this time for fulfilling tasks. For ex: If you are coming back from a meeting with a potential customer, you can create a price quotation on the go or record meeting notes, or look at who owes you money and call them directly from your phone or schedule the next meeting.

The startup was launched in India in May, 2013 and after two months, more than 15,000 small business owners in India are using Zoostr to manage work in a more organized and smarter way.

“Zoostr has been designed with Mobile in mind, while supporting PC. Although Smartphone penetration is still low in India it is growing at a breathtaking pace. Smartphones and Tablets represent a huge opportunity for small businesses in India to be more effective and more successful. Zoostr intends to help independent professionals and micro business owners take advantage of this in the coming months and years.” says Spencer Waldron, the CMO of Zoostr.

Such softwares not only help in saving time but also lead to productive results. Most of the small business owners are on a continuous hunt for a clutter free, simple to use software that can help them in managing work and in such a scenario, Zoostr can prove to be an imperative tool.

Do have a look at Zoostr!

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