Chains run their branches on paper, WhatsApp, and Excel. Daily sales sheets, stock counts in books, attendance registers, cash-up slips photographed and sent to the owner. Head office is blind until someone calls, and the owner finds out about problems days later, if at all.
One solution recycles perfectly. Every branch of a chain is the same shape. Every clothing chain is roughly the same shape. Same again for bakeries, restaurants, pharmacies. And estates prove the hard part first: if the app survives a tea estate, offline, rough conditions, strict audits, then a shop in a town is easy.
What the research already says.
- Don't sell payroll. Sri Lanka's payroll and HR market is crowded and cheap (hSenid, MiHCM, and a long tail of SME tools). The gap is branch operations and evidence, not salary calculation.
- The compliance hook is verified. Employers with 50 or more staff must already file EPF returns electronically every month (EPF Amendment Act No. 02 of 2012). Paper registers can't do it, and the new Digital EPF platform (Dec 2025) shows enforcement tightening.
- Apparel has budgeted pain. SME clothing factories face buyer audits (~$2,000 each, several per year) and donor programs are funding digital compliance right now.
- Go deep before wide. Every vertical SaaS success story (Toast, ServiceTitan) won one segment completely before expanding. We pick one chain type, win it, then copy.
What it could be.
- A branch app: attendance, daily checklist, cash-up, stock count. Works offline, syncs when it can.
- A head-office view: every branch, live, with exceptions flagged. "Branch 7 hasn't cashed up." "Stock variance in Kandy."
- A compliance drawer: EPF and ETF filings, audit evidence, inspection records. Always ready, never a scramble.
- Per-branch pricing a family-owned chain can say yes to. Not enterprise ERP tiers.
Open questions the target hunt answered.
- Which ~20 chains still run branches on paper, by name? Answered: see the target list.
- What is paper costing each one? Answered per target: theft, stock loss, wage errors, blind head office.
- Who signs the cheque? Family chains: the owner or MD, in one meeting.
- Which chain type do we win first? Open. First calls decide: Dinemore, GFlock, Thilakawardhana.
Full workings: chain target research with confidence tags in research/vertical-ops/, verified EPF facts appended after the 2026-07-26 verification pass.