An exclusive interview with Vikas Panchal, General Manager – Middle East, Tally Solutions at LEAP.
Tell us a little bit about your LEAP participation.
We’ve been participating in LEAP since day one, and every year the event keeps getting better. We consistently see new people from various countries coming in, looking for partnership opportunities. That year, we focused on our latest release—TallyPrime Release 5.1—which was specifically designed for Saudi Arabia. By “made for Saudi,” I meant it was one of the few concurrent multilingual software solutions available. In our system, users working in English could view reports in Arabic and vice versa. It also fully met all compliance requirements—covering VAT and invoice processing for both Phase One and Phase Two—ensuring we complied with all financial regulations. That release was our main focus, and we were excited to meet many new prospects as well as our existing customers.
How do you see the e-invoicing revolution happening in Saudi?
Saudi Arabia was the first in the GCC to implement e-invoicing, and they executed it very well, rolling it out in distinct phases—starting with large enterprises and giving every company sufficient time to prepare.
Are SMEs the primary target of Tally?
Yes, we focus on SMEs—especially mid-level ones. We still serve many large organizations that use our finance software for managing their back-office operations, even though they might use other systems for different functions. Our solution, Tally, remains a critical part of their financial management.
Are you seeing any specific opportunities in Saudi Arabia? How big is this market?
For us, Saudi represents a very large market, particularly with Saudi Vision 2030 in play. The vision is set to transform the entire oil economy and drive digital transformation across the board. We consider Saudi Arabia one of our second-largest markets after India. In the UAE, where we’ve been established for quite some time, the market is comparable—or even slightly larger in terms of volume and business approach—than in Southeast Asia, which is known for its substantial market size.
What are the new features added to TallyPrime 5.1?
Apart from the bilingual capability, which allows for concurrent multilingual functionality, we continue to innovate. This year, we’ve introduced business dashboards that simplify decision-making for business users by offering comprehensive analytics. Additionally, we’ve added features that make the software more user-friendly—for both the finance manager at the counter and the owner who wants detailed reports and analyses. We’ve also enhanced the system to better serve charter accountants, enabling them to access reports from anywhere at any time to guide business owners effectively.
Is your solution primarily hosted on the cloud? How does that work?
Our solution is available as both a perpetual on-premise license and as a cloud-hosted option. Some businesses prefer running it on their own devices rather than in the cloud. For those who want cloud access, we’ve partnered with AWS, allowing you to host it there under a subscription model. The key benefit is the flexibility—it’s easy to roll back or adjust as needed, which is one of the key strengths of our offering.
