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Making Home Automation A Reality
Navneet Dalal and Mehul Nariyawala are the brains behind Matic, a startup developing consumer robotics in-house from end to end. That includes hardware and software, from perception to design.
Navneet and Mehul were a part of the early team at Like.com (facial recognition software) until acquired by Google in 2010. They went on to start Flutter, a startup that pioneered hand gesture recognition. Google also bought Flutter in 2013.
While at Google, they helped launch Google Cardboard and later moved to Nest to help develop the camera’s facial recognition features.
But in 2017, they decided to return to the startup scene and co-founded Matic. Since then, they've built a team of over 40, with the brightest alumni from Google, Tesla, and Cisco.
Their mission: to make home autonomy a reality for everyone by building a robotics platform for consumer use.
Matic released their first product (Matic, a floor-cleaning device) in May 2023. They believe interacting with the world is the best way to learn about it. So, when their robot bumps into something new, it doesn't just stand there. It moves around, checks out the object from different angles, and gathers as much data as possible.
With this belief and vision in mind, the team hopes to continue building AI-led indoor robotics products and expand to industrial applications in the future.
“The Zeni dashboard is very critical for us. We visit that multiple times a day and we're able to quickly get a financial health check of what our company is doing, how much money went out, how much money went in, and then we can easily dive deeper if we need to.” - Shafaq Presswala, Operations at Matic
The Challenge
An Engineering-Focused Team Struggling To Navigate Finances
When Matic came to Zeni, Navneet and Mehul were very involved in the company finances. Matic's operations team – a team of one at the time – managed the day-to-day accounting and bookkeeping.
They worked with multiple vendors, both U.S. and International – and allowed their engineers to purchase software and supplies at their own discretion. This strategy prevented delays that would have likely been caused by a lengthy approval process.
However, it led to discrepancies and miscategorizations in OpEx reports. To sustain their pace, Navneet and Mehul recognized the need for greater financial focus.
Matic needed a finance partner that could help them:
- Take over the day-to-day bookkeeping activities for the operations team
- Determine how to properly categorize expenses from various vendors
- Maximize tax credits during their research & development (R&D) phase
- Manage their complicated PO process and varying payment plan schedules
“Having so many different vendors, so many different purchases, and being able to properly categorize all of that, overall it's just a little challenging for a hardware team. Zeni has really been very helpful in helping us understand how we should go about these things.” - Shafaq Presswala, Operations at Matic
The Solution
An Operating Expense And AP Management Strategy
Matic would have needed an entire accounting team to accomplish their financial goals.
Instead, Zeni provided Matic with a full-time dedicated controller at a fraction of the cost.
In combination with a personalized finance dashboard that updated their accounts in real-time, Matic's controller:
- Helped the operations team understand how to categorize their expenses and put a plan in place to execute against this
- Developed a more manageable AP process for the team
- Managed their day-to-day bookkeeping and accounting
- Generate the necessary reports to qualify Matic for R&D tax credits
“Without Zeni, we would definitely either need to have a team full-time that's dedicated to accounting Zeni helps us outsource a lot of the day-to-day bookkeeping and accounting, taxes, and helped us with R&D tax credits. No matter what the financial task, Zeni is helpful in either seeing it though or guiding us in the right direction to help us get it done.” - Shafaq Presswala, Operations at Matic
The Impact
Financial Visibility & Company-Wide Transparency
- Manage Spending & Recover Dollars – Zeni’s real-time and monthly OpEx reports allowed Matic to identify high-expense areas and categories, which helped them refocus and eliminate redundancies.
- High-Level & Deep Dive Insights – Matic was able to monitor their finances at a higher level with Zeni’s dashboard. They could also look into any report or expense to determine where their money was coming from or going.
- Strategic Advice – Matic’s operations team reviewed their dashboard and financial reports with their Zeni controller monthly to better understand what the numbers meant.
- Money Back – Zeni filed Matic's taxes and ensured they received the optimal amount of credits for their R&D efforts.
- Company-Wide Transparency – The Zeni Dashboard was accessible by anyone at the company and gave Matic employees (particularly the engineering team) a 30k ft view of the team’s finances, budgets, and spending.
- Speed Up Decision-Making – Matic can now quickly pivot or make decisions, gut check financial health, and be more mindful overall of its spending.
“Without Zeni, we wouldn’t have a single platform where all our financial information is available at the tap of a few buttons. Right now, it's presented in a really easy-to-digest manner so that just about anyone who's looking at these numbers can understand what they mean. It definitely helps with presenting the data in a better manner and making it all a lot more accessible.” - Shafaq Presswala, Operations at Matic
You too can get real-time visibility and dedicated controller support that you need to effectively manage your finances. Talk with a financial advisor here.
