Bangalore-based entrepreneur VR Govindarajan has developed personal finance management software Perfios, which lets you manage your financial portfolio and does your taxes for you.
Two years ago, IT veteran VR Govindarajan was chatting with a few friends, lamenting about the absence of a good accounting software that would help manage his investments, calculate expenditure and even help him with his tax calculation. The idea behind Perfios, a complete web-based accounting and personal finance management portal, originated there.
Two years and a year of private beta testing later, the software developed by Govindarajan’s Bangalore-based company is going on to a public beta. The software gives you a 360-degree view of your finances with real time updates of all financial transactions, empowering individuals to manage their own finances, which can otherwise be quite a daunting task. Perfios can do everything for you, unlike other softwares available in the market today that specialise either in bank transactions or the stock market alone. It is positioned to become the Indian mint.com.
This software works in three ways. “The first method is where the user enters login details of his bank account via a secure channel and the software picks up all the information and transaction details. The second method is one of our innovations. A user can upload his monthly bank statement and the software will automatically populate all the fields. The last method is manually entering all the info, says Govindarajan.”
Apart from calculating bank transactions, users can also avail details about their loans and investments.
This software is capable of automatically categorising all transactions depending on their nature. “It can learn which transaction was done where and categorises it accordingly. So you’ll be able to find out where you spent the most or get details about the kind of items you purchased,” Govindarajan says. The online app has both free and paid versions. The paid version calculates your income tax and has many more advantages to offer.
The company has placed a high premium on security.
Govindarajan says that their software does not store any private information in their server. “All primary information is stored in the user’s system, but is encrypted. The encryption key is stored in our server and so there’s no way a hacker can access personal information,” he adds.
The company has a user base of around 8-10 million in India and says that the software is targetedmore at individual users rather than corporates. They are, however, approaching individuals via corporates. Since it works completely within a browser, the company has also made a WAP version of the app, so users can check and update from a mobile phone. Users can also download all the reports on a monthly basis.
Another feature that the app comes with is in-depth analytics, which also lets you fit budgets and alerts when you overshoot it. So can this company with a 15-member team change the way we look at our finances? Hopefully, yes.
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