Key takeaways
- Prioritize profitability insights, with 27% of businesses focusing on net margin trends and revenue contributors.
- Enhance payment management by analyzing delayed payments and improving collection efficiency, comprising 23% of inquiries.
- Refine sales strategies based on product performance and customer behavior, making up 17.5% of questions.
- Leverage AI tools like Freya for quicker financial insights, reducing reliance on traditional accounting methods.
- Adopt data-informed decision-making to optimize operations and drive growth in Indian enterprises.
A detailed analysis of over 30,000 questions posed by Indian enterprises to Freya, an AI-powered accounting assistant developed by Refrens, offers a revealing snapshot of the key priorities and challenges faced by businesses in the country today.
The insights focus sharply on financial performance, payment management, sales dynamics and growth strategies, underscoring a clear drive towards data-informed decision-making and operational optimisation.
Profitability insights lead the inquiry categories, accounting for 27% of questions, according to the survey. Businesses are particularly focused on understanding net margin trends over recent quarters, determining which services boost profitability, identifying contributors to revenue growth and diagnosing cost centres responsible for margin changes.
“Most business owners rely on outsourced accountants or junior assistants to get the insights
they need for their business. However, this approach has three significant drawbacks: it takes two to three days to receive information, the exact context often gets lost in conversations, and it causes a lot of anxiety to the business owner,” Naman Sarawagi, co-founder of Refrens, explained.
Payment insights formed the second largest chunk at 23%, reflecting the critical importance of cash flow management. Questions highlighted efforts to identify clients with consistently delayed payments, analyse average payment cycles, assess collection efficiency, and track unpaid invoices nearing due dates.
Sales insights made up 17.5% of the queries, illustrating a strong interest in product performance and customer behaviour. Enterprises are probing repeat purchase rates, sales trends, pricing impacts and inventory management decisions such as SKU retirement or discounting, all aimed at refining sales strategy and maximising revenue potential.
Growth and lead activity inquiries represented 9.75% of the volume, with questions centred on lead source conversion rates, sales pipeline drop-off points, marketing campaign effectiveness and optimising revenue realisation processes.
Other notable areas include first-time setup assistance (8.75%), expense tracking (5.75%), general platform guidance (4.75%) and operational functional queries (3.5%), highlighting ongoing needs for streamlined workflows, automation, compliance alerts and actionable insights beyond basic reporting.
Refrens, a homegrown startup, claims to have more than 1.5 lakh global clients. The company stated that it is supported by investors, including CRED founder Kunal Shah and Paytm CEO Vijay Shekhar Sharma, among other prominent founders.
