Tally to expand product offering

Plans foray into Africa, Asia Pacific

Tally Solutions Pvt Ltd, the Rs 229 crore accounting software provider, plans to expand its bouquet of products to include accounting software in regional languages. The company expects to introduce the new products, presently being developed, in the next six months.

According to Bharath Gopalakrishnan, president, software and services group, Tally Solutions, it will first offer the accounting software in Hindi, Arabic and Chinese. "We are planning a foray into the markets of West Asia, Asia Pacific, East Africa and West Africa to expand our presence," he said.

Tally will also launch new exciting modules such as excise duty, payroll, job costing and point of sales in the next six months, he said.

Tally has just entered into an alliance with ICICI Lombard General Insurance under which Tally 7.2 solution (already available on the Linux platform) will be made available to small and medium enterprises with free insurance cover worth Rs 5 lakh. The insurance package includes Rs 2 lakh of fire (property) insurance, Rs 2 lakh burglary insurance and Rs 1 lakh insurance for cash-in-safe.

The offer is available to all customers who buy and use the software between November 1 and December 15. Tally will pay the insurance premium for the first year, which works out to Rs 2,000 per licence.

Gopalakrishnan said that through the offer, the company aims to sell an additional 50,000 licences in the next 45 days. ICICI Lombard stands to gain about Rs 2 crore premium through the deal.

Stating that the level of piracy was about 50 per cent in the accounting software market, Gopalakrishnan said that the company has tied up with ICICI Lombard to increase the market for licenced product purchases. "One way to curb piracy is making the products affordable and increase the availability of software and we intend to do it," he said.

Tally Solutions says it commands 90 per cent market share in India in its product area with over 1.8 million customers in 88 countries worldwide.

ICICI Lombard director R Rangarajan said that the company has collected a total premium of Rs 822 crore during the first half of FY06, of which 36 per cent has come from retail businesses.