Zoostr is a free small business solution made to help small businesses in India to grow and succeed.

On a mission to help small business owners in emerging markets, a group of self-disciplined, hard working, curious, trustworthy and humble people got together and found Zoostr.

Zoostr helps freelancers, self employed, micro businesses, private practices and partnerships etc. in India manage their customers and market their business. Their accounting software is designed in such a way that it helps its users spend less time managing it and more time on growing their business.

According to their website, "Our vision is to simplify the complex operations of a small business into simple activities, that you can complete within 3 clicks on desktop PC and on a mobile device such as a smartphone or tablet."

"Zoostr's aim is to enable non technical people to enjoy the benefits of using a digital accounting software. We also aim to help small business owners who might not have a PC but do have a smartphone."

Gal Ofel (CEO), Guy Shalom (CTO) and Spencer Waldron (CMO) are the brains behind Zoostr who have been there and done that.

To know more about Zoostr we got in touch with Gal and her what he has to say:

Happy reading!

1. Hello Gal, please introduce yourself to our readers.

My name is Gal Ofel, I am the co-founder and CEO of Zoostr. I have been a product manager for many years inventing new products, phasing out old products, rolling out telco and enterprise grade products and working with customers around the world: North America, South America, Europe, Middle East & Far East/Asia. While in high-school, I developed Lotus 1,2,3 (the "grandfather" of Excel) macros for small businesses cash-flow management. In the last 4 years I was responsible for sales and business development in the mobile application industry.

2. How did your team come up with the idea to co-found Zoostr?

Since the launch of the first iPhone and then the first  iPad, I was looking for the application that will transform the way businesses are working. I have evaluated many ideas in various fields (healthcare, SMBs, large enterprises, education, etc.). In parallel we formed Zoostr and decided to focus on micro-businesses as they are untapped and mobile. We spent a lot of time with potential users, silently experiencing "a day in life" and the product requirements became clear. We also have a passion for markets with high growth in the economy, mobile internet and smartphones and designed our products this way.

3. What were some of the design and development problems that you faced in designing Zoostr?

a. The ability to deliver quickly a cross platform application. We selected HTML5 with Responsive Design to allow users to access Zoostr anytime and anywhere without requiring us to develop a version for each platform.

b. Ease of use: complete any operation "in 3 clicks". We decided to provide straight simple flows and UI to allow any user to become operational right after registration. We had to trade of functionality and flexibility for simplicity.

c. Where to focus: took a "mobile first approach" to the extreme. The product is built first to best fit and work on a mobile to meet the 2 previous challenges. If it can be used on the mobile, it’s simple enough and could work on a PC.


4. How long did the complete design and development cycle take for the team, including the PC, Android and iPhone apps?

We set a date for the launch: 3 months from start for a cross platform HTML5 application. About a month later we released the Anrdroid app. iPhone/iPad users are happily using the web based application.

5. Although the basic features of Zoostr are free, what percentage of your clients are on the premium plan? How successful is your monetization model?

We just started to provide premium features. About 5% of our active users are paying and we except this ratio to grow with exciting premium features and services planned for the coming months.



6. How well received has Zoostr been in the Small Business World? How many people are using Zoostr as their accounting software?

Over 10,000 users and growing.

7. What are some of the compliments that you have received from your users for creating Zoostr?

Please refer to the testimonials on our site: http://www.zoostr.com/testimonials.html
Additional compliments in this screenshot:


8. When you are not working on Zoostr, how do you like to spend your spare time? What do you find most recreational?

Family, indie music, hiking and exploring new places I have never visited before.


9. What are your future plans with Zoostr? Do you plan on adding any new or advanced functionality to it?

Expand horizontally and vertically. Provide anything a small business needs, including marketing and decision support. Vertically, take advantage of our experience with users in different market segments to provide the customized app to their needs. In general, we are launching a minor feature every week and a major every month. All is driven by users’ activity and requirements.

10. Having gone through the entrepreneurial process, what advice would you like to pass on to budding and aspiring entrepreneurs?

a. When you have a new idea, don’t waste a minute and take it to the market. Talk with the potential users (no need for product or mockup), including travelling to the other side of the world. People will be happy to assist you and hear how you can help them.

b. Act as you are a well funded corporate. Every day, every decision should be taken as you are making a long distance run even when uncertainty is high.

c. Experiment with things you don’t know. You will find in many cases you could get better results than the standard or find original solutions.

b. Enjoy it, it’s fun.

One other observation: mobile usage is growing fast with Zoostr users. The time users spend on mobile devices (smartphones and tablets) has tripled since we launched Zoostr.



Thanks Gal for taking out the time and doing this interview with us. We'd like to wish you and your team at Zoostr the very best for the future.

Stay tuned with E-junkie for more of such inspirational start-up stories.