Spendkey: Empowering businesses with self-service Analytics

Spend analysis is the process by which invoice data is converted into structured data to derive meaningful information that can help in business decision making. By leveraging the three core areas of spend analysis— visibility, analysis and insight—companies can take important decisions around their spending. Spendkey, a London headquartered startup, helps companies improve earnings using insights through spend analytics. 

“We have a tool named Spendkey. We get the financial garbage data and we add AI and machine learning layers to analyse the database. It provides the financial data related to the supply chain including the cost of supply chain, payments and assessment risk with the suppliers. It is mainly used in category management in manufacturing industries. Chief financial officers get a detailed analysis on financial structure, says Akshay Upadhye, COO and co-founder of Spendkey. 

Though it was launched officially on 1 April 2021, Spendkey has been offering its services since 2017. 

“I have worked for 27 years in industries as a management consultant. I made strategies for customers and transformation agenda. One needs to get different kinds of information regarding the existing supply lines. And the data needed to be extracted manually using Excel. To overcome these challenges we started our journey. We had been working with a media company in London. They bought our product and used it. Then we decided to begin the startup. We have eight customers who are using our platforms,” says Upadhye. 

There was a cost pressure on the company during the pandemic but it managed to withstand the disruptions caused by the pandemic.   

“We were solving customers’ problems during the pandemic and they were relying on us. We have already invested 2.5 crore from our personal savings in platform development. Now we have a 25-people-team in Pune. Our annual recurring revenue is around Rs 60 lakh. It’s gradually growing and we are expecting to reach at Rs 1.5 crore in next one year,” says Upadhye. 

The Spendkey platform is now semi-automated and it’s trying to provide an automated and self-serviced solution. Spendkey also aims to augment its system so that 10-20 thousand customers can use the platform at a time and the data will be visible on the dashboard within 15-20 minutes of uploading. 

“We are from a technical background. We are not sales people. However, we are consulting with the customers and getting positive feedback. But we are seeking guidance to immediately convert our customers. We want mentors to validate our existing vision. We want to provide independence in the business field. Customers will get flexibility in data analytics using our platform,” says Upadhye about his expectation from Mentors of Global Bharat Programme. 

Mentors of Global Bharat is an initiative by TV9 Bharatvarsh and SAP to provide guidance and support to budding entrepreneurs. Spendkey is one of the 20 startups selected to be groomed by the mentors under this programme.