Comply With Labour Laws Without Much Labour
Core Integra says its SaaS-based plug-and-play tool Ctrl F gives access to 40,000 pages of the Indian labour law and technology makes it simple to operate.
Established in the Year 2009, Core Integra is India’s leading regulatory technology company transforming Compliance. Its solution Ctrl F helps Corporate India stay on the right side of the law with a real-time environment that is trusted by over 500 entities and 7000 enterprise users in 24 industries. Ctrl F offers an ERPbased software tool to help stakeholders comply with Indian labour laws. The platform brings technology-based governance, risk, and compliance solutions to organizations, from large corporates to start-ups. To know more about Ctrl F, BizNewsConnect Editor B N Kumar chatted with MAHESH KRISHNAMOORTHY, Managing Director of Core Integra. Text of the email interview:
BizNewsConnect: What prompted you to start Ctrl F? How did it all start?
MAHESH KRISHNAOORTHY: When a mention of Labour Law compliances is made, the image that comes to one’s mind is that of books, paper, excel sheets which are to be filed, stored for many years in physical format. Any query requires a search through volumes of paper/computerized sheets. Management reporting must be manually done and is time consuming. To top it all, never will it be known whether the organization is 100% compliant or not at any point of time. This was the real-life scenario when we conceptualized Ctrl F in 2014 and largely still exists hence an innovation of a decade ago has become one of the most rapidly adopted platform in the compliance space over the last few year especially during and post pandemic years.
BNC: A Brief on the process…
MK: Ctrl F easily tracks the ever–changing environment of labour compliances. Ctrl F brings a centralized Compliance monitoring framework with a complete checklist of all applicable central, state and industry-specific laws. The SaaS-based plug-and-play tool gives free access to 40,000 pages of the Indian labour laws; 1000+ Laws and Acts, 10,000+compliances, 20000+ legal updates, 1000+ register and return formats including approx. 200 bi-lingual formats and more. Being an integrated governance, risk and Compliance software, it manages contracts, litigation, risks, controls and audits. The software also tracks policies, procedures, SOPs etc. With automated alerts and triggers supporting the comprehensive dashboards and reports, the intuitive and easy-to-use modern design & interface is designed for an enhanced visual experience. Ctrl F can be integrated with any HRMS, Payroll ERP, Accounting ERP and other third party tools for seamless information exchange in a secure manner.
BNC: Can you explain a couple of typical problem scenarios that can be resolved with your platform?
MK: I can mention the case study of one of the largest EPC in India managing global projects as well. Ctrl F manages the entire end to end compliance workflow for Contractor management which includes aggregation, onboarding, verification & validation, processing, attendance management, wage runs, record-keeping, generation of registers & returns in bi-lingual formats across multiple States, performance tracking and real time dashboards. The Client has over 300 sites with over 3000 Contractors across all States in India and has been using Ctrl F for over 3 years now. Other than centralized record management, accurate processing and real time information, Ctrl F has been able to control revenue leakage and ensure 100% compliance adherence in a segment where maximum non compliances are prevalent putting Principal Employers to highest level of risk.
BNC: How does this Ctrl F process exactly work?
MK: We have standard on-boarding process for new Clients on the platform. Our Transition team collects necessary information in coordination with various Client teams post which they configure the platform aligned to Clients’ business dynamics and compliance requirements. This entire process takes 15 to 30 days depending on Client scale. Once the platform is implemented, our operations team trains the Client users and handholds for one to two cycles of compliance process. Repeat trainings are offered till the Client is comfortable with the platform. In parallel, any customizations and integration requirements are undertaken by the technical team. For a large scale enterprise end to end implementation does not exceed 90 days.
BNC: How many offices do you have currently, Do you need to have many offices, considering that you are a tech company and the app can be accessed from anywhere?
MK: We are headquartered at Mumbai and have branches in Pune, Bengaluru, Chennai, Hyderabad, Kolkata and Delhi. From these 7 locations, we manage Clients who have offices in 2000+ locations which would not have been possible without Ctrl F. Our overall staff strength is approximately 120 who manage 500+ Clients which again is possible only due to technology platform. 75% of the team is based out of the HQ and IT development centre whereas only 25% of the team is spread across the 6 branches. The presence of limited headcount in few major cities is important from sales perspective and any liaison with labour/government authorities.
BNC: Laws are laws. Unless we know the guidelines attached to the acts, we can’t be sure how we can ensure compliance. How does your expertise come into play? Do you offer online consultancy on region/state specific laws?
MK: We have a full-fledged Compliance Advisory Practice which conducts various training sessions for Clients and Prospects, webinars for open participation, knowledge imparting sessions through various associations and forums other than the Retainer services that is subscribed to by many of our Clients. The advisory services is offered in physical and online mode. The coverage is all Acts and Laws including latest updates in the areas of Employment, Social, Factory, Establishment, Contractor, EHS, Industrial relations compliances.
BNC: Your note says you achieve Rs 300 cr topline. What is your revenue model?
MK: Our revenue model is software implementation charges, subscription charges, outsourcing service fees and advisory fees.
BNC: Is there any competition? What is your USP?
MK: There is hardly any competition in the space we operate in primarily because we are an execution platform which integrates with third party tools for seamless data transfer in a secure manner whereas most of the competition products are compliance management systems which operates as a checklist where you need to do things outside the system and update the tool manually to generate reports and certificates.
BNC: What is your staff strength? What about legal teams – how strong are they?
MK: We have approx. 120 professionals who can be split as 65% from the HR and compliance domain and 35% from technology domain. The profile includes Chartered Accountants, Company Secretaries, Lawyers, Management Graduates, Post Graduates and Graduates with specialization in MSW and PM&IR. We have a strong research and operations team which is well networked and continuously updates Ctrl F with the latest regulatory changes and requirements.
BNC: What about funding? And what are future plans?
MK: We are a profitable and debt free company with cash reserves for our growth strategy. We aspire to list the Company in the next few years. Our current focus is on deep penetrating the Indian markets, spread our reach rapidly through Partners, introduce new age technologies like AI-ML in our platform and explore inorganic growth through acquisition of synergized entities.
