About

Shriram Bhat

I am an Indian entrepreneur, programmer, and financial consultant. In my personal life, I am an avid reader of non-fiction books and blogs, and have a passion for metaphysics, mysticism, spirituality, astrology, palmistry, graphology, music, and yoga.

Early life

I was born in the Bhatkal town of Karnataka, India into a Konkani-speaking Gowd Saraswat Brahmin Hindu family. I attended the Vidya Bharati School and the New English School in my hometown, before going on to study for a bachelor’s in commerce at the Canara College affiliated with Mangalore University, where I received my degree in 2010. Later, I took up chartered accountancy and completed the integrated professional competence course in 2012.

Career

I began my career as an Audit Assistant at Manohar Chowdhry and Associates (MCA), a well-known chartered accountancy firm in India. While at MCA, I was exposed to a range of functions including central statutory audits of a nationalised bank, internal audits of Special Economic Zones (SEZs) and companies in the petrochemicals, oil, and gas industry, concurrent audits, stock audits, tax audits, and multi-currency accounting, payroll computation, and statutory compliance for multinational clients under various fiscal laws, the Companies Act, the Reserve Bank of India, and FEMA. During this time, I gained hands-on experience with multiple financial systems and ERPs such as Tally, SAP, Winman, Laser Soft, and Finacle, and began developing my own software tools to analyse and audit financial data.

In 2015, I started my entrepreneurial journey with OmniMonk Solutions, a web technology-based company. At OmniMonk, I implemented multiple projects using Node.js, Python, PHP, MySQL, MongoDB, HTML, CSS, and JS to create an engaging user experience. I also developed interactive e-books with custom voice-over narration and text highlighting in EPUB3 for the Konkani Language and Cultural Foundation (World Konkani Centre), which won the runners-up for the Digital Book of the Year at the Publishing Next awards.

In 2016, I co-founded OmniMonk Consultancy Services, a financial and taxation consultancy firm, to help people make better decisions with insightful reports and advice. In 2017, I joined Vicit Infot Tech as a founding member and lead developer, where I developed IconicBot, India’s first multilingual AI-powered chatbot for celebrity fan management in the entertainment industry. I worked on multiple micro-products and services to create interactive movie bots on Facebook Messenger and Twitter for the promotion of movies in a fun and powerful way. The team was selected for the NEXT AI program and moved its base to Canada.

In 2018, I joined Clear (formerly ClearTax), a software start-up that aims to simplify the financial lives of Indians. Currently, I am managing the ERP integrations vertical in the B2B Enterprise business segment, managing ERP integrations for Goods and Services Tax, E-Waybill, and E-Invoicing compliance in India and Saudi Arabia.