Tulsian creates POSist to smoothen restaurant operation

What makes an entrepreneur different? One would say a constant urge to try something new and solve problems. Also, a true entrepreneur is not afraid of exploring different ideas and venturing into a completely new area if he feels there is the need for it. Meet Ashish Tulsian, the co-founder of POSist, a cloud-based point of sale(POS) solution for restaurants. He started off with a mobile VAS startup named TechoApex; ran a successful restaurant business as that excited him but then realised that there was no restaurant software that helped the restaurant owners to manage the operations. And the idea of POSist was born. In a conversation with Larry Bradley, Tulsian describes how the idea came to him and how he created a product that is slowly gaining acceptance in the market.

It all starts with an idea: While running my restaurant Apni Rasoi in New Delhi, I realised that restaurant owners needed to stay in the restaurant to manage the operations. From inventory management to theft in the restaurants, all these aspects needed to be taken care of. Being a person with a tech background, I scouted the market for software that would help me manage our operations. Even though there were established companies in the hospitality and service –oriented space, such a product did not exist. I wanted to invent a solution that could help in everything and served as a complete package for the restaurants.

The cloud edge: Here, I need to explain our strength – we are a cloud-based solutions provider. It means that the major part or entire application resides on a cloud server infrastructure that is used via internet on the client side. A lot of companies market their application as cloud-based while in reality they are still installation-based applications which send data at the end of the day to a server from which the client could access his reports remotely. But such applications require heavier hardware to support, which drive up the hardware costs up for their clients unnecessarily.

Educating customers: But convincing and educating potential clients about a cloud-based POS was a challenge. While we have the advantage of learning first from the market and improving, we also have this uphill task of educating the market about your product, technology, and justifying its merits and hence pricing. We tried explaining to the restaurants about cloud based POS and made them understand that none of their daily business data stay in their computers, rather it is stored online. We explained to them how banking with ICICI or HDFC or any other bank is largely banking on the cloud. And then we showed them that we use the best and secure cloud infrastructure with encryption at transaction points so that their data remains safe.

It’s only now we are witnessing some action in this space and can see some new-age POS providers coming out building me-too products but we don’t see them as competition but rather we feel they will help us educate market faster.

How is POSist technology relevant to everyday life? Please share your views