On July 15, my firm IRIS will launch our “India Cares” initiative to give away Euro 20 million of software for free to European companies. That is the day of the 15th EU-India Summit in which the leaders of the EU and the Indian Prime Minister will participate.
It is our way of expressing our gratitude to residents of the EU for their help to India in these times of the pandemic and economic crisis.
The scale of assistance being provided by the EU to India is huge. According to a EU release, they are funding Indian NGOs who have distributed 3,25,000 hygiene and sanitation kits, even as 13,450 families were provided daily ration and 4,50,000 food packets were distributed. To help with livelihood, EU has provided assistance to 10,000 farmers to help them market their agricultural products.
That is not all. The German KFW and the French AFD are co financing a public policy loan to India along with the World Bank. KFW is contributing 460 million Euro and AFD is providing 200 million Euro.
In India, we are grateful. And as Indian company, we want to show that we are grateful.
The European Securities Markets Authority (ESMA), the EU regulator has a mandate in place requiring public companies in Europe to submit their annual reports in iXBRL. This will increase compliance costs for all companies. It is reasonable to expect that it is the smaller companies that will be hurting the most.
We decided therefore that we will lend them a helping hand.
So we decided that for one year, the first year of the mandate, we will give our software, IRIS Carbon, for free to all companies with a market cap of less than Euro 100 million. If they want not just our software but also our conversion services, that too will be offered free for one year
The IRIS Carbon software we are offering is the same that our paying customers buy and is backed by our high quality service. It has been used to generate several thousand filings across the world. It has been used in Italy for filings to Infocamere, in UK for HMRC filings, in South Africa for submissions to CIPC and for SEC reporting in USA. In the US, it consistently tops the charts for the quality of filings it generates. The rankings of the various softwares are available here.
Our offer is being made with no strings attached. We place no obligations on those taking the offer. Because in times of crisis, every Euro saved counts. Or to paraphrase an old saying, a Euro saved is a Euro earned. Through our offer, we expect to help European companies save Euro 20 million.
We are launching this because we care. Because India Cares.
