Chennai Entrepreneur Builds Software That Tracks Workforce Productivity; Federal Bank Becomes Client

In 2023, Gartner forecasted that a significant chunk of knowledge workers would work in a hybrid and remote model by the end of 2023. 

But when it finally happened, various reports highlighted how employers struggled to monitor their field employees’ productivity and performance metrics.

In an exclusive interview with Startup Pedia, Bharath Annamalai says, “It’s only fair for companies to want to know what their employees are up to, especially when a lot of their employees work on the field, remotely, or in a hybrid setup. The question is how seamless can we make it for them. We built Lystloc to help enterprises ethically track and monitor their workforce in minutes.”

Even though Lystloc is an efficient platform for keeping remote workers accountable, it is designed primarily for companies with a high percentage of on-field jobs.

Bharath says, “Location tracking and assessing the effectiveness of a visit made by an employee remains a key challenge for a lot of enterprises.”

Founded in 2017, Lystloc is a Chennai and Delaware-based real-time location intelligence SaaS platform catering to 4000+ enterprise customers. It enables businesses to easily improve productivity and grow with one of the leading field tracking systems.

A 100% bootstrapped platform, Lystloc is a one-stop-shop for employers, organizations, and companies looking for everything SaaS — HRMS, productivity tracking, payroll, and task management.

HOW IT ALL BEGAN

Bharath Annamalai completed his Computer Science and Engineering degree from Chennai’s Bharath Institute of Higher Education and Research. Right after, his journey in the tech and development realm started.

In 2007, he landed a Senior Software Engineer role at Infosys. Eventually, he helped various international companies like Nordstrom and Kohl’s Department Stores. In 2012, he moved to Vonage to build BI systems, assess business requirements, and build applications and workflow systems with necessary integrations.

Bharath says, “During my corporate career in engineering, I realized I loved creating something from scratch and seeing it generate real results in the outer world. I decided to start a consultancy firm in the space of Data Warehousing and Business Intelligence. It was my first startup.” 

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In 2012, Bharath started MindsBeam Technologies Inc. to provide Big Data and Cloud Warehouse solutions to customers. With a wide client base in New Jersey and New York, the firm continues to successfully operate.

After spending 5 years juggling a full-time job and building a startup, Bharath finally quit his job in 2017 to focus entirely on Lystloc.

One of the key gaps he found many employers struggling with was location-based tracking. Either it would be too heavy or complicated to easily access and understand, or it would simply not be accurate.

Bharath decided to build a platform that solved the above and acted as a complete suite of SaaS products for employers. That was how Lystloc started in March 2017.

CHALLENGES

Initially, it was Lystnow, a food ordering application in Chennai. It was a fully functioning mobile application that delivered food. This was also the time when food delivery giant Swiggy was dabbling in something similar. 

After some time, seeing the growing need, Lystnow pivoted to Lystloc— a larger, comprehensive on-field productivity software.

Bharath got together a highly qualified tech team and started building SaaS products that would benefit employers. He says, “Our singular aim at the time was to solve location tracking for employers. But doing it on Android was a major challenge.”

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Android has a battery drain problem, so producing accurate GPS coordinates requires a lot of work. Since the firm was very early in the market of location tracking, the team had to write a lot of algorithms to produce exact coordinates.

But Bharath and his team persevered and were able to crack a system that produces accurate location data on both iOS and Android.

Lystloc also innovated a special Face Recognition API that is available for public use. 

“I believe in adding real value to the tech space. So we made the API public for anyone to employ in their individual systems,” he adds.

LYSTLOC: ON-FIELD PRODUCTIVITY PLATFORM

Lystloc is an on-field productivity SaaS platform that provides location intelligence through real-time tracking to enterprises, organizations, and companies with high accuracy and privacy. It is accessible, affordable, and scalable for anyone in the world.

Fieldwork problems that it solves:

1. Manual assumption of attendance

2. Delayed reporting

3. Absence of verification 

4. Absence of meeting insights

some companies do use devices to take care of the above problems, but they’re expensive, time-consuming, and often complex to use. 

Lystloc is a solution that provides on-demand data insights. With its AI-powered facial recognition, location-based attendance, live tracking, API services, meeting notes, and task management features, it addresses issues of inadequate and insufficient reporting in fieldwork.

Bharath says, “We have one mission: employers should have full visibility as to what happened in each meeting their employees took, how successful the fieldwork was, and whether any issues need immediate attention.”

Not just location tracking, Lystloc has a full suite of SaaS products that any employer would want. It functions as an all-in-one solution, acting as everything from an HRMS, and a productivity tracking system to a payroll processor, and task management platform.

Over the years, Lystloc has garnered a large list of revered B2B customers like Federal Bank, Pine Labs, Cashify, Blackbuck, Matrimony.com, and BPL Medical Technologies.

GROWTH & FUTURE

The completely bootstrapped Lystloc has witnessed a 100% year-on-year revenue growth. However, Bharath didn’t reveal the exact revenue figures.

The company has a team of 60+ people, all working remotely. 

Bharat tells Startup Pedia, “We’ve always worked remotely. Lystloc has a culture of accountability and reliability - exactly what our products also seek to bring to other companies.”

Bharath Annamalai wants to grow Lystloc even further and cover larger markets. A tech executive at heart, he signs off by saying that he will never stop building.

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