When we started building cohort26, the plan was simple: target Chartered Accountants. CAs manage the finances of thousands of Indian SMBs. They're the trusted advisor. If we could get a CA to use our payroll tool for their clients, we'd have a distribution channel that scaled.
It made sense on paper. So we built the tool, and then we went to market.
I reached out to every CA I knew. My dad reached out to every CA in his network. Between us, we covered dozens of people — experienced accountants, some with 50+ business clients, some who'd been practising for 20 years.
The response was almost unanimous: "We don't do payroll."
What CAs actually do
It took us a few conversations to understand why. CAs in India are compliance professionals. Their day is GST filings, income tax returns, audits, ROC filings. Payroll — the actual act of calculating salaries, generating payslips, uploading ECR files — is operational work. It's below their grade. They delegate it or don't touch it at all.
We had been targeting the wrong person entirely.
So who actually does payroll?
Once we stopped asking "why won't CAs use this?" and started asking "who actually uploads the ECR file every month?", the picture became clear:
| Who | Company size | How they do it today |
|---|---|---|
| Business owner | 1–10 employees | Excel. Guesswork on PF thresholds. |
| In-house accountant | 10–50 employees | Excel or Tally. No dedicated payroll tool. |
| HR executive | 50–200 employees | Keka or Greytip if they can afford it. Excel if they can't. |
The person actually doing payroll is sitting with an Excel sheet every month, manually looking up PF caps, ESI thresholds, and PT slabs for their state. They're scared of getting it wrong. They have no one to ask.
"Your clients are doing payroll in Excel. Every month. Getting the PF and ESI thresholds wrong."
That's our user. Not the CA. The person one layer below — the HR manager, the accounts executive, the business owner who handles everything themselves.
The Kredily moment
Here's the twist. After we figured this out, we noticed that Kredily — one of the larger Indian payroll platforms — has an entire page dedicated to CAs. We almost took it as a contradiction: if CAs don't do payroll, why does Kredily have a CA page?
We looked more closely. Kredily isn't selling to CAs. They're using CAs as a distribution channel. The CA doesn't log in and run payroll. The CA recommends Kredily to their business clients, who then sign up and use it themselves.
It's a small but important distinction — and it completely changes the product narrative, the onboarding flow, and how you talk about the tool.
What we changed
We rewrote our entire website. The old message was aimed at CAs doing data entry for clients. The new message is aimed at whoever is actually sitting with the salary sheet — whether that's an HR manager, an accountant, or the business owner themselves.
We kept the CA page, but we reframed it. Instead of "we'll do the work for your clients," it now says: "Give your clients a free tool. They run it. You review the numbers." That's an easier ask — it doesn't require the CA to change their workflow at all.
The product itself didn't need to change. The free AI Payroll Agent was already built for the person with an Excel sheet. We just stopped talking about it like it was for someone else.
What we're doing next
We're going back to the same networks — but asking different questions. Instead of "do you know any CAs?", we're asking "do you know anyone who runs a business with 10–30 employees? Who handles their HR and accounts?"
One layer below. That's where the real user is.
If you're the person doing payroll in Excel every month — or you know someone who is — try the tool. It's free, no signup, and it runs entirely in your browser. We'd love to hear what's missing.