StartupSarthi CA Agent

Headline

StartupSarthi – AI-Powered Virtual CA for Startups & MSMEs

Inspiration

As engineering students, we are always driven to identify real-world problems around us. During a family function, my teammate noticed a challenge faced by their family business in soybean seed processing. Despite reaching many farmers, they were struggling with penalties due to late tax filings and overall cash flow management. Seeking help from Chartered Accountants (CAs) was either too costly or inconsistent, and hiring a full-time CA was simply unaffordable.

When this problem was shared within our team, we collectively brainstormed and realized that many small startups and MSMEs in India face the same issue. Together, we decided to design StartupSarthi — a simple web-based application acting as a virtual CA, capable of maintaining cash flow details, generating reports, and drafting investment proposals to solve these challenges effectively.

What it does

We propose StartupSarthi, a minimal yet powerful virtual CA.

It performs bookkeeping and organizes financial data.
Provides timely tax reminders to avoid penalties.
Supports multilingual interaction (Hindi + English) for accessibility.
Offers investment and funding suggestions tailored to the business context.

How we built it

We are learning through YouTube tutorials, documentation, and hands-on practice to build this multi-agent system using the IBM Agent Development Kit (ADK).

APIs are integrated through IBM Cloud and powered by Granite models.
A simple yet effective Streamlit UI is designed for user interaction.
Development is structured into three phases:
1. MVP: Multilingual chatbot, bookkeeping, and payment reminder system.
2. Extended: Cash flow forecasting, credit-readiness score, and auto-generated reports.
3. Advanced: Human-in-the-loop CA escalation, multi-language expansion, and advanced compliance features.

Challenges we ran into

Building the complete project within limited time was not possible, but we are working steadily on it.
Selecting the right tech stack and learning its implementation was a major challenge.
Prioritizing features for the MVP stage required careful trade-offs.
Handling data collection, API feasibility, and workflow orchestration was recurring hurdles.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We identified a real, India-centric problem statement that affects crores of small businesses.
Designed a practical and executable solution aligned with India’s MSME ecosystem.
We take pride in being young engineers addressing national challenges with modern AI-driven solutions.

What we learned

Gained practical knowledge about IBM ADK and Watsonx.ai.
Understood the importance of connecting multiple tools to build a seamless solution.
Learned how to break down complex systems into smaller milestones during development.

What's next for StartupSarthi

We are committed to making StartupSarthi a live, usable solution for startups and MSMEs.

Adding advanced features while ensuring compliance with data security standards.
Expanding to multiple Indian languages to reach regional entrepreneurs.
Ultimately, creating an AI-powered financial companion that empowers small businesses and contributes to Atmanirbhar Bharat.