Small businesses should not need an expert to use their software

My father and brother run paints, hardware, sanitary, and electrical shops in our hometown. There is stock in the shops and in godowns. The work is physical, varied, and continuous. Software has to fit into that work.

The accounting tools they encountered could be difficult to use, required at least some accounting knowledge, and often meant returning to a computer. I wanted to make the process simpler and affordable for more shops. That is the starting point for Dukanam.

Start with the task someone is trying to finish

A shopkeeper may need to check whether an item is available, understand where stock is held, or record a transaction while also answering a customer. The product’s structure should help that person complete the task with confidence.

This changes what “simple” means. A screen can look clean and still make a user translate their everyday work into unfamiliar terminology. A product can have fewer buttons and still require too many steps. Ease of use has to be assessed in the setting where the work happens.

For me, the important question is whether a person can understand the action and its consequence. What am I recording? What will change? How do I correct a mistake? Those questions should have obvious answers.

The price includes the effort of using it

The subscription is one part of what a business spends. Learning the system, entering existing information, training a colleague, and getting help also take time. For a small operation, that time comes from people who already have other responsibilities.

An affordable tool that is hard to adopt may still be expensive in practice. I want usability and pricing to be considered together. Reducing the need for specialist knowledge is part of making software accessible to a smaller business.

That does not remove the complexity of accounting. It means the interface should explain what the user needs to do, while the system handles the underlying structure carefully.

We encountered a similar problem in HR

My wife, Chandrika Bondalapati, worked as a recruiter and later as a manager. She also managed Hawiot’s operations and HR activities. Together, we saw gaps in the HRMS and ATS tools available to a small company.

For our team of twelve, we were paying ₹4,900 a month for core HR. Project management and location tracking would cost more. That was our own experience, rather than a claim about every provider in the market.

It helped shape NineRole: free access to all features for startups with fewer than ten employees, and a simple ₹80 per employee per month structure. These are the terms we describe as of October 2026; a reader considering the product should check its current pricing directly.

Small teams deserve a complete workflow

A business with twelve people still has attendance, recruitment, leave, and operational decisions to manage. A small retailer still needs reliable records and a useful understanding of stock. The scale changes the budget and the staffing available; it does not make the underlying work disappear.

I believe good product decisions begin by taking those constraints seriously. Describe the task in familiar language. Make errors understandable. Give the user a sensible next step. Price the service so a small team can make a clear decision.

The opportunity is to build software that people can use while running their business. That is a demanding standard, and a worthwhile one.