Bytes from Tally Solutions founder Bharat Goenka

On the challenge of creating a mass market software product

The challenge is mindset. When Microsoft looked at the engineering of Word, they wanted to do it in such a way that no Microsoft person would be required to train you how to use it. It had to be made simple to use, intuitive. Similarly, we were clear we wanted to sell our product to thousands of people, and that became the objective of our engineering. Which is why today we can sell 5,000 Tally units a day. A Lamborghini or a Porsche may be faster than a Formula 1 car, but they won't win in F1 because they are not designed to. They can't do a pit stop in 8 seconds.

On offering his solution on the cloud (SAP, Ramco are experimenting with this)

People say cloud computing reduces cost. But I say cost depends on your business model. There is as much technology in Windows 7 as there is in SAP ERP. But SAP is priced far higher because it sells to only a few customers. We are targeting millions of customers, and that business model keeps our costs down. Besides, core business applications have to be amazingly responsive. Most of us still use Word, not Google Docs, because we want instant response. Bandwidth will never be enough to ensure instantaneous response for cloud offerings. And even if it were, switching will always create a lag.

On Tally's challenges in India

Piracy is our challenge. There is no software buying market in India. The trouble is, organizations like Nasscom are not very interested in taking up the issue because apart from us, no Indian company is really impacted. It does not impact an Infosys, nor does it impact other software product companies like Subex because they are not in the mass market.