The CA Building No-Code BI for SMEs: The Story of Vikas & Magenta Insights

Vikas Mundhra, co-founder of Magenta Insights, brings nearly two decades of experience from iBall into building a no-code BI platform that empowers SMEs with seamless reporting.

Sep 26, 2025

From steering iBall’s growth for nearly two decades to building his own venture, Vikas Mundhra’s journey has been about transformation. In 2018, he co-founded Magenta Insights, a no-code business intelligence platform designed for SMEs, making data reporting seamless for companies across 25+ industries.

If I had to describe myself in three roles, it would be this: a Chartered Accountant by qualification, a businessman by experience, and an entrepreneur by choice.

I completed my CA in 2001 and soon after joined iBall, which was just a small team with big ambitions at the time. Over the next 17+ years, I saw it grow into a dynamic group of more than 3000+ employees. It was an incredible journey, and I had the privilege of working with some of the most committed teammates, distributors, and partners across the country.

The Burning Question: Why Excel in the Age of ERPs?

Even as iBall scaled, one thing never sat right with me. We had invested in SAP, a world-class ERP system, but despite this, most of our crucial business reporting was still being done manually on Excel sheets.

When Vikalp Somani (my now co-founder) joined me in 2008, this pain point became more obvious. Together, we kept coming back to the same question: Why, in a world where technology was rapidly advancing, were businesses like ours still relying on manual Excel sheets for something as important as data reporting?

We had multiple channel partners and mountains of data. Yet, making sense of it and extracting insights was painfully slow and inefficient. The lack of smart, integrated reporting tools for SMEs was evident and frustrated us.

And, it wasn’t just us facing it. It was a problem across industries.

The Birth of Magenta Insights

In 2018, after years of struggling with this gap, we decided to solve it ourselves. That’s how Magenta Insights was born, with a mission to simplify reporting and make business intelligence truly accessible.

Unlike tools like Power BI or Tableau, which are DIY and self-serve, our focus was on SMEs who aren’t very tech-forward. Magenta Insights provides:

Ready integrations with 20+ ERPs like Tally, SAP, etc.
A no-code platform that’s simple and tech-friendly
Solutions tailored for B2B businesses

Today, we work across 25+ industries with clients like Bikaji and Vega Helmets.

Building Through Uncertainty: The COVID Years

Just when we had clarity on our product in 2018 and were ready to accelerate, the world was hit by COVID-19.

I had always imagined building Magenta Insights in a physical office with a close-knit team. Instead, we had to build everything virtually. Our foundation was laid online- product development, customer demos, and onboarding- all without meeting people face-to-face.

At first, it was unsettling. But in hindsight, this was a blessing in disguise. It forced us to think of Pan-India from day one since geography was no longer a limitation.

Milestones That Shaped Us

Investment from IIM Ahmedabad in our startup
10 reputed customers turned investors, including Kaka Industries, backing us
A growing customer base across industries and geographies

But our proudest milestone? The bell we ring in our office every time we onboard a new customer. Because every single win counts.

Lessons in Entrepreneurship

One of the questions I often get asked is: What’s your advice for founders? Here’s what experience has taught me:

Bootstrap as long as you can. Use your own resources in the early stages- it gives you freedom and clarity.
Choose investors carefully. Alignment of values and vision matters as much as capital.
Build your network. Sometimes, your most loyal customer may turn into your strongest investor, and that is the best validation you can ask for.
Don’t just listen to what your customer says. Focus on what they actually need. Your job as a founder is to read between the lines, understand the real pain point, and deliver a solution.

Life Beyond Work

Outside of work, I find joy in simple things. I love reading, mostly psychology and business books. One book I always recommend to early-stage founders is “The Mom Test” by Rob Fitzpatrick, a brilliant guide on how to talk to customers and truly understand their needs.

Music has always been a part of my downtime. But over the years, I’ve stopped chasing the elusive idea of “work-life balance.” For me, entrepreneurship itself is a balance. It’s 24/7, it’s consuming, but it’s also fulfilling. The ability to pause when needed, to immerse when inspired- that’s the beauty of this life.

What Success looks like

Earlier, success meant chasing inflated numbers- revenues, customer counts, targets. Now, it’s about impact.

Our goal is to reach 10,000+ businesses across India, simplifying how SMEs handle data and decisions.

For me, a startup was never the dream. The dream was to solve a problem. And in solving that problem, we ended up creating a startup. Sometimes, that’s how the best journeys begin, not with an idea to build a company, but with a commitment to fix what’s broken.

And, that’s our story!

What inspires us about Vikas Mundhra is his ability to reinvent himself. After spending 17+ years scaling iBall into a 250-member organisation, many would’ve rested on that success. But Vikas chose a different path.

He stepped into entrepreneurship with Magenta Insights, a venture born out of curiosity and a burning question- why are businesses still stuck on Excel? Today, Magenta has grown to serve 25+ industries, showing that the most impactful startups don’t begin with chasing big dreams but with solving real, everyday problems for businesses.