HR solutions for small organizations made easy with Zoho Campaigns 

The company

HRTailor was founded to support businesses and entrepreneurs with their HR needs. The genesis of HRTailor can be traced to its parent firm, Team Management Services, which was founded in 2013 and catered to corporate customers for services like payroll and compliance processing. Whereas the company catered to large corporations, many requests came from startups and smaller firms, who needed help in restructuring their salaries and managing their HR activities. In 2021, Abhijit Divekar founded HRTailor to target startups and SMEs, which have always been the backbone of the Indian economy.

"At HRTailor, we offer our clients an online HR manager, which takes care of everything from initial onboarding to exit management, including payroll, compliance, and everything in between," Divekar says, noting also that because Indian laws related to HR are regionally variable based on company size and industry, they're quite complex—too complex for any business leader to navigate, especially when they don't have the right support or the bandwidth to hire a full-time HR. "That's where HR Tailor comes into play," Divekar says, "and that's what we've been providing to these clients."

With the pandemic came increased acceptance for online solutions—including for online HR management tools. "In fact, most of our initial clients came on board during the pandemic or were struggling to adapt to the new reality," Divekar says. "HR played a crucial role in ensuring employees remained productive during this time. For larger organizations, many policies were already in place, but smaller companies often lacked them, making policy development and implementation a challenge. Fortunately, technology helped bridge the gap."

HRTailor has a team of around 40 members, including account managers and the support staff who handle various HR activities. They currently serve approximately 150 companies—primarily small firms with 10 to 200 employees. 

The challenge

Initially, HRTailor acquired clients through referrals and direct inquiries, but ultimately had to start using online channels, as referrals weren't a sustainable source for leads.

When they started around 2013, one of the biggest challenges HRTailor faced was in finding experienced digital marketers, since few people then understood digital marketing well. In the end, they trained most of the people they hired from scratch. "That was one big challenge: getting the right people who understood how various marketing tools work, how email campaigns work, and how social media campaigns work," Divekar says. But that's not all; back then, marketing tools often had many limitations and required a background in IT—and on top of that, it wasn't easy back then to reach out to customers, get their details, or approach the target market.

Also challenging was explaining what an online HR manager was to customers via email or social media, not to mention the widespread uncertainty that arose during the pandemic's second wave, which made many companies hesitant to spend.

The solution

While Divekar is relieved that these problems have been sorted today, getting there was not a straight road.

"Over the years, we've used a lot of email tools, and Zoho was always known to us," he says. "We've used over 10 products from Zoho. Zoho Campaigns was something that definitely stood out as worth using over other tools in the market." A problem that Divekar noticed in other solutions was that they were either developed by mostly foreign companies or structured more for marketing outside India, whereas Zoho met the requirements of the Indian market.

The benefits and ROI

When the team started using Campaigns, they found it more user-friendly and tailored towards reaching the target audience within India. Plus, Zoho offered much more value for money compared to most other products on the market. "What we were using earlier was costly," Divekar says. "But unfortunately, they were the only options available at that time, so we had no choice but to go for them. However, when we discovered Zoho Campaigns, it was good. The UI and interface were simple for my team to grasp, and since we've always been bootstrapped as a startup, we needed to ensure we use our funds wisely."

Divekar elaborates on the benefits he has derived from Campaigns. "Zoho Campaigns is a winning solution. We can now reach ten times more people each month with a similar budget, launch more campaigns, and engage a wider audience. Zoho Campaigns also offers continuous feature updates and integrates seamlessly with other Zoho products, eliminating the need for separate tools for additional functionalities."

Zoho Campaigns's simple UI has received much praise from the team at HRTailor. "Its simplicity has been helpful; minimal training was required to get everyone up to speed. Additionally, the platform enables us to reach a large audience with a single campaign, which is particularly beneficial for startups. Delivery rates and post-campaign analytics are also easy to understand and provide useful insights for re-marketing."

Looking ahead

Divekar believes that in offering an affordable HR solution in the Indian market, they've made a huge breakthrough. "We've enabled companies to have a full-fledged HR setup without the expense of hiring dedicated staff. Additionally, we've addressed the issue of underutilized HR resources by providing flexible engagement options tailored to each company's needs."

Over the next two years, Divekar hopes to increase HRTailor's monthly outreach fivefold. "We've spent the past few years testing and refining processes, especially in the HR domain for our Pan India operations," he says. "Now, with a solid infrastructure in place, we're poised for drastic expansion. Zoho Campaigns will play a crucial role in this expansion, given our focus on digital outreach. Email marketing has consistently delivered the highest ROI for us, and we plan to increase both the quantity and quality of our email campaigns."

To know more about HRTailor, click here.