User Insights ( Call links | Individual responses ) We spoke to 10+ B2B Trade business owners to understand their Invoicing, AR/AP management and Payments behaviour . The following are some of the salient insights that emerged. While B2B services felt like a clean segment where GST registered businesses had less complexity and a large proportion of “White” business, the trade segment seems much dirtier. There will be significant “black/unaccounted” business, old age users, less technically savvy folks and paper-pen based comfortable incumbent practices. In terms of segmentation, the lever around low and high SKUs OR industry will not yield much fruit because business practices do not vary by these levers, but by size of business, branded vs unbranded, markets etc. The most relevant lever which affects business practices is ERP/desktop vs otherwise (note that we have rarely found businesses who have a desktop but no ERP). The next best lever is the age of business or business owner. Current Clear users in this segment use Invoicing for the following use cases - On the go - Many trade businessmen have to travel to markets for business development. In such cases they use Clear to make invoices “On the go”, i.e. for order booking while at customer site. Quick create & share - A lot of times, customers need to be quickly given a bill when they visit the shop. Digitalization drive - Some businesses have an inherent drive to adopt Digital tools. Some also feel that the “Professional” way of invoicing can show them in good light to their customers. However, this is a subconscious and weaker lever. In all the above use cases, there are some caveats to note - In many cases, Clear is not the primary invoicing tool in the first two of the above cases. It is either being used as a “temp” solution, i.e. for the time being (in the On the go use case) or only as an emergency use case (in the Quick share case). Later, there is an actual bill book based invoice which will be made and ERP where the data will be accounted. Most traders provide goods via transporters. A hardcopy is needed for the transporter to carry . Not everyone has a desktop. Thus, anyways a bill book or ERP printed bill will be made. In the user set we spoke to, the ones having a desktop had Tally as well. Tally acts like the source of truth for their data primarily owing to the desktop form factor. However, it is not a real time updated software. An accountant or employee updates it post facto regularly. This has some important implications. Most of them are not satisfied with Tally’s invoicing. But they are using it for inventory and accounting. They find Clear and other Invoicing tools better and are using them as add-ons. Double entry is necessary in this case. If we have to sell them well, we might need either compatibility of some sorts (say, Invoice number format) or a connector. Invoicing is a distinct process than inventory. Thus, we can position Clear as an Invoicing tool and still work with Tally users. This is because A lot of inventory management on a daily basis is done on paper pen books. A lot of invoices are also made on paper pen bill books or apps while inventory is on Tally or paper. Thus, there is no single point Digital integration necessary (like we were thinking Invoicing and Inventory will be integrated). Integrated Sales, Purchase and Inventory management is attractive for the segment (which auto-tracks stocks like Current Inventory = Past Inventory + Purchase - Sales ). However, there are some caveats - There is a certain comfort level / trust with paper-pen based inventory tracking. Also, where the inventory is large the operator of business is different from the owner. This operator (staff or manager) may or may not be savvy enough to handle a mobile inventory product. Training will be necessary, may not be sufficient. Some users may want a multi-user access control system , as they have multiple employees in the business.