Tally's journey: Garage to serving 26 lakh customers

Bharat Goenka spoke about the initial years of Tally's inception 38 years ago, the idea behind the product, the hardships, and how the company has grown in the last few decades. The journey of Tally began in a garage in Koramangala, Karnataka with two people, and today the organisation boasts of employing around 1200 people and has a client base of 26 lakh.

Commenting on the inception of Tally, Bharat stated that in those days computers didn't exist and people were not tech-savvy posing a massive challenge to their computer-dependent application. He shared that at one business exhibition, they were the only people selling software, people came to their stall wanting to see the software and they had nothing to show so it became difficult to get people to buy the software.

Bharat shared an incident that took place in Kolkata where they would visit potential clients for demonstrations carrying the computers in a jhaka (basket carried on the head). Elaborating further he said that those who were introduced to keyboards were afraid to use them. Bharat said that his father, Late Shyam Sunder Goenka, refused to learn how to use the computer as he believed that the computer was like a car—a person buys a car to drive it and not repair it. The same philosophy went into their product.

Tejas shared how he got interested in the family business, he said, "One thing that fascinated me from the beginning is that the company started at a time when India's service boom was taking place. It was around the same time frame as Infosys and Tata Consultancy Services (TCS)."

Bharat added that his organisation wasn't good at training people in the early days, he said, "If you want to run a services business, you have to be great at highly-trained deploying and making people effective. That is what you have to be good at."

Bharat mentioned that they should have learned how to train people from Infosys and TCS. He added that when developing a product, it should solve the problems of the user and not require external help to utilise the product. A product should be built keeping the consumer in mind. In line with this philosophy, his company has a policy of returning money to customers if they don't find their product useful.

Bombay Master Printers Association (BMPA) hosted the 17th edition of the Print Summit 25 in Mumbai at the NCPA on 16 January 2025. The printing industry stakeholders participated, sharing their journeys in the business, exchanging ideas, brainstorming, and networking with peers from the industry.