Leading financial accounting software product firm Tally India Ltd on February 14 unveiled the country's first concurrent multilingual business accounting software for small and medium businesses (SMBs).

The innovative software in two versions -- TallySilver 8.1 and TallyGold 8.1 --has been developed for concurrent use in 10 major Indian languages with effective transliteration facility to convert English terms in the vernacular selected.

"Both the versions are customised to file value added tax (VAT) and fringe benefit tax (FBT) returns, besides service tax and excise computation. Their accounting and inventory management software allows SMBs to key in data in all unidirectional languages concurrently," said Tally Managing Director Bharat Goenka here at a product preview.

Priced at Rs.9,000 for single user and Rs.22,500 for multi-users in a local area network, the product offers multiple language interfaces at different levels to enter and display information or data in any of the 10 languages.

"With phonetic keyboards, users can enter information/data in English or local language to generate bills, invoices and other documentation. The software will display the content in the language selected after transliteration. It also has options to enter new words with provision to display the matching words in the language of choice," Goenka said.

Though business accounting is still predominantly done in English across the country, the company is targeting non-metros with a population of one-three million for hardselling the product, as vernaculars are extensively used for personal and business purposes.

Keeping in view the increasing PC penetration and greater compliance by businesses in the VAT regime, Tally hopes to rope in about 200,000 new customers for its 8.1 version during the ensuing fiscal year (2006-07).

According to various research findings, out of the estimated eight million SMBs in India, about 2.5 million of them have shifted their accounting systems to computers from the traditional ledger or manual accounting.

The Rs.2.25 billion ($50 million) company's R&D division is also working on developing software in Urdu and Arabic for exporting the product in South Asia and West Asia where it has strong presence.

With several state governments transacting business in regional languages, Tally has set up a separate marketing cell to promote its multilingual software product in treasury operations across the country.

The privately-held company is projecting a turnover of Rs.2.70 billion ($60 million) by the end of the current fiscal (2005-06), projecting a growth of 20 percent over the last fiscal.

( http://economictimes.indiatimes.com)