Based in Malviya Nagar, New Delhi, Indserve Infotech was founded by Sudhir Gandotra and D N Rai in 1994. Communicators, a company providing turnkey Web hosting and Web design services, and e-ventures like www.netshooter.com and www.artindia.net, now form part of the Indserve Infotech network. Its product Kalculate claims to be the first GNU/Linux accounting software to be marketed in India and even in Asia. It promises easy menus with standard data entry vouchers, easy-to-get industry standard FA reports, MIS and additional reports, and even the use of PostgreSQL RDBMS to make data available for additional MIS work. In an interview with Express Computer, Sudhir Gandotra talks about the project and what went into developing the
software

Why did you choose to write Kalculate?
We have been using GNU/Linux since 1995 and have grown with it in a very interesting and positive way. We have seen the power of GNU/Linux taking shape and now reaching the desktop, ready for the common user to exploit the real power of the computer. I understand GNU/Linux more as a movement that just an operating system or a set of software programs.

We felt last year that the time for developing applications on GNU/Linux was arriving, and so we started the project Kalculate and the result is the first financial accounting package on GNU/Linux in India and Asia—which is definitely getting a lot of support from the market and the big vendors.

How much time in man-hours did it take to develop the software?
It is not possible to pinpoint the man-hours. Overall the team took a year to have the application ready.

How does it compare with existing Windows products in India and GNU/Linux products in other parts of the globe?
We took Tally and E-X as the de-facto standards for accounting software in the market (of course, on the Windows platform) and decided that all the features that these software packages offer should be provided in the first version of Kalculate. We have all the standard financial accounting features present.

There are some things included that go beyond what the Windows-based software can do or offer. For example, Kalculate is the only one using an RDBMS. It can give you all reports as pdf files, which can be e-mailed.

On GNU/Linux, there is one more commercial software available in the Financial Acco-unting segment. It’s called Quasar, and is put out from Canada. In Asia-Pacific, ours is certainly the first one that is available in the market.

What has the response been so far?
I would say the response is very good. IBM decided to launch Kalculate at their Developer Works conferences. This was a good opportunity, a good acknowledgement, and helped us reach over a thousand people.

How would you describe the uniqueness of this product?
It’s an application that fills in a gap on the desktop. It encourages people to start using GNU/Linux, and shift to it. It’s also an application that aims to catalyse the launch of many more applications on the GNU/Linux platform.

One could call it an application, which, though the source code is not being given out, is open to the extent that its database is available in standard SQL format and the availability of APIs will help people to enlarge it to their specific requirements and also will help connect it to other applications on the GNU/Linux platform.

From a commercial point of view, is there sufficient incentive to develop free/open-source software products?
I think it is more important to have applications on the GNU/Linux platform available at good prices, rather than just expect the world to create free software for specific needs.

There is, to my mind, no incentive to develop an application like Kalculate in the open-source domain, as this kind of application does not require any intervention from the developer once the user gets it—it being very simple to install, learn and use.

It is not open-source. It is not free of cost. But it runs only on the GNU/Linux operating system. We have an internal commitment and mission to work on GNU/Linux only.

Kalculate is not a small achievement. Soon, we expect to have more applications, not only by us, but catalysed by the presence of Kalculate. We are trying, on our part, to encourage others to come up with GNU/Linux-based applications. The GNU/Linux scenario lacks a community of GNU/Linux-based business people, and we are trying to develop that.

What are your future plans?
These will include adding further features to Kalculate; and also developing additional software like payroll, inventory, ERP and CRM on the GNU/Linux platform.

More details on Kalculate are available at www.kalculate.com