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Refrens Founders Naman Sarawagi and Mohit Jain, who have turned their personal experiences and challenges into opportunities.

A startup based in Bengaluru is offering a quick, revolutionary, and simple invoicing and payment collection system. Refrens has created a model to increase lead flow for businesses and has scaled the invoicing system more quickly and broadly.

Refrens founders - Naman Sarawagi and Mohit Jain
Naman Sarawagi and Mohit Jain standing together

Any service provider, freelancer, or independent employee in the gig economy will tell you that getting paid on time is a constant issue. Refrens was created in order to solve this problem.

Founded in July 2019, the team claims that 400 businesses are already using the platform and that it is growing at a rate of 20% per week.

HOW REFRENS STARTED?

It all started with Naman and Mohit’s personal experience. Both of them were freelance consultants who worked with a variety of startups. While there were numerous invoicing platforms, the majority of them had a limited free trial period. Not only that, but payment collection was a major challenge because it necessitated numerous follow-ups and reminders.
This was the primary impetus for developing a system around it, and thus Refrens.com was born. As they progressed, they encountered additional challenges that freelancers and small agencies faced, such as limited access to loans and credit, which prompted us to develop unique features such as Early Pay Discounts to shorten cash cycles.
The platform is intended for B2B service providers such as designers, software developers, accountants, marketers, and consultants, among others. Their main focus is on individual freelancers and small businesses. 

Product & Services Refrens Offer

Our platform allows you to create invoices, quotations/proforma invoices, track expenses, and generate TDS/GST reports. Our payment gateway can be integrated into the invoice, making B2B payments comparable to online shopping. Our international payment rates and turnaround time are the most competitive in the market. We provide unique features such as Early Pay Discounts to recover payments faster, part payments, and so on.

Refrens was created to address the delays and inefficiencies that freelancers face when collecting payments from various customers. Refrens allows you to create an invoice in under 30 seconds.

The Refrens team believes that freelancing is the way of the future. As a result, for this domain to be successful, significant improvements and advancements are required.

The Founders Of Refrens

NAMAN SARAWAGI

Refrens product and marketing manager is Naman Sarawagi. He is also the creator of FindYogi.com. Naman previously worked as a product manager for Freecharge and ZipDial.

Naman, who has a knack for investing in the right places, has his money in Daily Ninja and Holidify. Daily Ninja is a startup that offers subscription-based daily product delivery, whereas Holidify is a holiday planning website.

MOHIT JAIN

Mohit Jain is in charge of Refren’s technical division. He was the Chief Technology Officer at Findyogi.com. Mohit has worked as a tech consultant for a number of startups. Findyogi.com is a website that compares the prices of products across various e-commerce websites. Way2News purchased the company in 2016.

Mohit and I have been friends since high school. This is also not our first venture together. We have previously completed a number of projects and ventures. I guess we know each other too well and can complement each other to the best of our abilities, Mr. Naman Sarawagi stated in an interview.

The Launch Of Refrens

The duo examined industry reports on market size and payment tools used by freelancers and other professionals. They released a raw product to a small group of people. They began improving the product based on the feedback they received.

Their first product was poorly received by the audience. It demanded a significant shift in user habits. After incorporating some freelancers’ feedback into the product’s second iteration, Refrens’ offering was quickly accepted by the freelancing community. People liked the tool because it was simple and easy to use.

Investors In This Project

They raised the first round of funding from a group of investors that included some well-known Indians such as Vijay Shekhar Sharma (Founder of Paytm) and Anupam Mittal (Founder, Shaadi.com). Other prominent names were

  • The Collective fund 
  • Mumbai-based early-stage fund Firstcheque
  • Amiya Pathak of Ezcred
  • Gireesh Subramaniam of Freshworks
  • Sujayath Ali and Navaneetha Krishnan of Voonik.com
  • Amit Lakhotia of Park
  • Ajeet Khurana – CEO of Zebpay
  • Founders and senior management of Kaleyra
  • Founders of DailyNinja, Springworks

The funds will be used to expand the platform’s reach and to add freelancer-friendly financial services, according to the startup.

Services They Offer

Refrens is a multi service provider and offers a bunch of services through their platforms. Few of the prominent services and free tools that Refrens offers are

  • Free Invoice Generator
  • GST Bill Format
  • Proforma Invoice Format
  • Quotation Generator
  • Purchase Order Format
  • Receive International Payment
  • Escrow Management
  • Hire a Freelancer
  • Quotation Format
  • Invoice Format

FREE TOOLS OF REFRENS

  • Online Invoice Generator
  • GST Invoice Format
  • GST e-Invoicing
  • Quotation Generator
  • Proforma Invoice Templates
  • Purchase Order Format
  • Receive International Payments 
  • Invoicing Software
  • Invoicing API
  • Hire a Freelancer
  • Escrow Management
  • Quotation Software

TEMPLATES

  • Invoice Format
  • Quotation Templates
  • Estimate Templates
  • Commercial Invoice Templates
  • Freelance Invoice Templates
  • Consulting Invoice Templates
  • Photography Invoice Templates

User Selling Proposition

The intuitive design, combined with a strong technology stack and excellent customer service are some of the company’s differentiators. They are attempting to build a system around invoicing rather than restricting the platform to just invoice creation, which is, by the way, free forever. One can track expenses, generate TDS/GST reports, and gain a comprehensive understanding of their entire P&L.

Furthermore, Refrens distinguishes itself from the competition by capturing the client-vendor relationship, which enables businesses to network among themselves to generate qualified leads.

Customer Acquisition

Both founders had a small circle of friends who were the first ten users. They later published the product on a few forums and freelancing groups. The platform currently has 12,000 businesses and freelancers using it, and it is growing at a rate of 10% per week.

Refrens Invoice Generator

Refrens is completely free to use. You can generate invoices, quotes, and manage your expenses at any time. You can use any of these for free for the rest of your life. However, if you want to receive payments online, you only have to pay a small fee. They are attempting to build a system around invoicing rather than restricting the platform to just invoice creation, which is, by the way, free forever. One can track expenses, generate TDS/GST reports, and gain a comprehensive understanding of their entire P&L.

How Many Transactions Can You Make?

Unlimited. There is no limit to the number of transactions you can make. You can create an unlimited number of invoices and transactions. Everything is completely free.

How They Reach The Audience?

They have used a variety of techniques to market the products and raise awareness. To reach their customers, they opt for SEO, SEM, Social Media, Content Marketing, and Email Retargeting.

How Does Refrens Make Money?

Invoice generator, GST invoice maker, proforma invoice generator, estimate & quotation generator, expense management software, and purchase order generator are all services offered by Refrens.

We keep a small payment gateway fee for any online payment made through Refrens. We charge a sales commission for every new customer you bring us.

Refrens App

In order to use the Refrens services, you do not have to install any mobile application. Refrens is a complete web based application The interface of the application is user friendly which means you do not need to have some sort of computer knowledge to deal with it. 

Refrens Login And Registration

The registration process is quite smooth for the new customers. It provides the ease to use your Gmail account for Refrens account creation. Or you can use any other email address for this purpose. 

After successful creation of your account you have to provide some details like Basic Information, Profile Information, Communication Details and your Online Presence to further proceed with the services. 

Countries Associated With Refrens

Refrens provide its services globally or to get the services specifically according to your location, you can select your current location. The countries associated with Refrens are

  • India
  • Philippines
  • Singapore
  • Saudi Arabia
  • Canada
  • Srilanka  
  • Australia 
  • Indonesia
  • Kenya
  • UAE
  • Nigeria
  • Zimbabwe 
  • United Kingdom
  • Pakistan
  • Bangladesh
  • South Africa
  • Malaysia
  • United States of America

Data Safety

If you are wondering if your data is safe on the website then the answer is Absolutely. It is 100% safe. Only you can decide with whom you want to share invoices and quotations. The documents you create are only accessible via special URLs you share or PDFs you download. Refrens do not share your information with anyone for any reason.

Refrens – Future Plans

The company is only a few months old and has slightly more than 500 users.

Please keep in mind that we only publish profiles of companies that are at least 8 months old. However, because of the team, vision, and product, an exception was made in this case.

We will be expanding our capabilities to accept multiple currencies via multiple payment instruments over the next few months. We want to be the leading platform serving freelancers in India within the next two years. We will delve deeper into their workflow and add more collaborative features, added Naman Sarawagi.

A Piece Of Advice For Startups

After the successful collaboration and individual projects of Naman and Mohit, they are considered to be A geek with some business sense and Product guy with programming sense. They advised the new start ups to choose a large market that you are familiar with. Solve a problem in which you know the user’s identity. Solve difficult problems in the long run.

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