I write software for businesses, and I have spent years on workshop floors in Delhi NCR: job cards, customers who dispute a bill at delivery, jobs that lost money without anyone noticing. Kenro Workshop is what came out of putting those two together. The system TUD Innovations now sells to workshops through Kenro was built on a working workshop floor in New Delhi, with the people who run it, and used on real cars with real technicians and real GST bills before anyone was asked to pay for it.
People ask why someone who writes software would build for workshops when there is plenty on the market. The honest answer is that I had spent enough time on the floor to see that most of what was on offer did not understand how these shops actually work, and I could build something that did. Most people only get to do one of those.
The floor came first
The floor Kenro Workshop grew up on is a working auto studio in New Delhi: paint protection film, ceramic coating, detailing, and denting and painting. A customer wants a quote on WhatsApp, an update on WhatsApp, and a bill with GST on it. A technician wants to know which car is next and what is being done to it. The accountant wants the month closed. None of these people care about software. They care about the car, the money and the time.
I have been building software for businesses since 2020. When it came to this floor, I did not start from a vendor's feature list. I started from how the floor actually ran and asked what a system would have to do to replace it without anyone noticing the change as extra work.
What a workshop really runs on
Walk into most independent workshops in Delhi NCR and three things are doing the job of a system: a paper register at the counter, an Excel sheet on someone's laptop, and a WhatsApp group that has quietly become the job tracker, the customer list and the ledger all at once.
That setup is not stupid. It is cheap, everyone already knows how to use it, and at one bay it works. It starts to creak at the second bay. Then the owner's evening goes into reconciling three records that were never meant to agree: which car went out, what was billed, who still owes money.
Workshop software exists in India, and there is a lot of it. My problem was that a PPF and detailing studio asks very specific questions, and generic garage software tends to be designed around a service centre doing oil changes. Film is bought in rolls and used by the foot. A stock screen that tells me I have "1 roll" tells me nothing about whether I can do a full front tomorrow.
Decisions the floor made for me
Building on a working floor means the floor gets a vote on every screen. A lot of what Kenro Workshop does today exists because the floor insisted.
The job card starts with photos at the gate, and a walkaround video at intake. Arguments in a workshop almost always happen at delivery, and they are almost always about what the car looked like when it arrived: the scratch that was or was not there, the fuel that was fuller. A video taken on day one ends that conversation before it starts.
PPF rolls are tracked by the foot, because that is how film is used and how money leaks out of a PPF studio.
There is an udhaar ledger and part payments, because credit is how a lot of Indian trade works. A regular customer pays some now and some later. Software that only knows "paid" and "unpaid" invoices forces the owner back into a notebook for the real picture.
WhatsApp updates are drafted for you and sent by you, and quotes are approved by the customer from a phone. Customers are already on WhatsApp. Asking them to download an app or log into a portal to approve a quote is asking for the job to stall.
GST invoices and bills of supply are raised from the job card, and month-end goes to the CA as Tally and GST exports they can file from. Nobody types a bill twice.
Staff use it on the phones they already carry, with permissions per person. The person at the counter does not need to see the salary screen.
There is one rule behind all of this that I hold the product to: no feature for a problem that has not been seen on a real floor. It sounds restrictive, and it is. It is also why Kenro Workshop stays small enough for an owner to set up in a day.
Why owners set it up themselves
Kenro Workshop owners set it up themselves, with a guided checklist inside the app. Customers and cars are copied from Excel or Google Sheets and pasted in, and every line is checked before it is saved. The team learns it on their own phones. A workshop can be running the same day.
I chose that on purpose. I know what a software installation visit costs a workshop: it costs the owner's whole day, and the floor does not stop because a consultant has arrived. If the software needs a person to come and explain it, it is too complicated. The test I use is simple. If a screen feels complicated at a workshop counter on a busy Saturday, it is complicated, and it gets changed.
Proven before it is sold
Kenro has one rule that comes straight from building it this way: a system ships only when it has run a working business. Kenro Workshop ran a working floor before it was offered to anyone, and it still runs a Delhi NCR workshop every working day. Kenro Dealership, the system for pre-owned car showrooms, was held to the same rule and runs in production at a Delhi showroom.
There is a risk in building on one floor, and I would be lying if I said otherwise. The risk is that you build software for exactly one shop, with all its habits. The guard against that is how the product is made: one engine, configured per business, never a private fork for one customer. One floor's quirks do not get to bend the product for everyone else. When a workshop in another city, or another country, sets it up, it gets the same system that floor uses, configured for its own bays and services. Kenro Workshop is available in ten countries for that reason: an overseas workshop sets up the same way as one in Delhi.
If you own a workshop and are thinking of building your own
Most owners should not. Building software is a second business, and it eats the hours the first business needs. I could do it because I was already writing software for a living. What I would suggest instead is that you judge any workshop software by whether it was made by someone who has stood at the gate when a customer disputes a scratch.
A few questions are enough to find out:
- Does it know the difference between a PPF roll and a bottle of shampoo?
- Can a customer approve a quote from WhatsApp, without an app?
- Can I export everything to Excel, today and after I stop paying?
- Can my CA file from what it gives me at month-end?
- Can I set it up myself, or does someone have to come?
Those are the questions the floor asked before a line of Kenro was written. You can see where they ended up at workshop.usekenro.com, read more about the company on usekenro.com, or read more about me and what else TUD Innovations builds.