SERVICE ~ HONOR ~ ACCOUNTABILITY ~ RESPECT ~ EXCELLENCE

 Deeksha Bhaskar “There was trust established very quickly” 

When Deeksha Bhaskar and her father Vijay Sharma opened RASA: Flavours of India in Halifax in 2018, they had a goal to create an authentic Indian fine-dining experience for their guests. Their passion for serving high-quality foods made with genuine ingredients has made RASA: Flavours of India and SURA Lounge, which opened in 2019, popular places for foodies to enjoy delicious meals. 

Deeksha grew up with a family that loved hosting people and planning events, and her father had previously owned a restaurant in India. With both sharing a passion for food and hosting people, opening a restaurant in Halifax, where Deeksha studied for her undergrad, seemed like a natural fit. They bought Fireside Lounge and Tom’s, which was open in the same building, and over the course of a couple of years, rebranded Fireside into RASA: Flavours of India, and later Tom’s into SURA Lounge. 

“When we took over the businesses, we were stuck with a lot being thrown at us. We were new to Canada, we didn’t know anybody, and suddenly we needed accounting people and marketing people and we needed to sort suppliers and contractors. We tried not to change things a lot when we took over the business. We stuck with the suppliers and contractors so we could see how everything was working and then decide what to change.”

Among the service providers that came with the businesses was a small accounting firm that handled Fireside and Tom’s bookkeeping and accounting. Shortly after Deeksha and her father took over the restaurant and lounge, that accounting firm was purchased by BAGE.

Values aligned with BAGE’s

It was a change that worked well for Deeksha and her father. 

“It was very easy to get along with Gerard. I remember early, Gerard, his partner, my parents and I had lunch together and we saw a great work ethic and someone whose values really aligned with ours. We decided to continue working with them on an ongoing basis, rather than finding someone else. We knew we could trust them with our finances and to meet the fiduciary duty of an accountant.” 

BAGE takes care of all the bookkeeping, tax filings, reconciliations, and all accounting functions. Deeksha and her father are only responsible for ensuring the information is uploaded into the cloud-based system and being aware of how well things are functioning. BAGE does the rest and supplies financial reports. 

“I don’t have a finance background, I have an arts background so I’m not much into numbers. The same goes for my parents, it’s not their background, so we needed some help in that area. We looked at someone coming in on a regular basis to do it for us in our office, but it didn’t seem like a great idea.”

Being cloud-based saves valuable time

Among the benefits of staying with BAGE was that BAGE is entirely cloud-based, which Deeksha says has saved her a great deal of time and made her job much more efficient.

“I love being cloud-based. I like to have access to information from wherever I am, but I don’t want to carry papers around with me all the time. I can log on and see if something’s been missed and see how things look. The reports are very up-to-date, so it’s very easy to see what’s going on instead of having to wait months to see reports.”  

Deeksha says working with BAGE made the stress of starting up a new business feel much less chaotic and overwhelming, and freed them up to take care of other issues. 

“When you’re busy setting up a new business, you just don’t have time. You’re already not comfortable with the numbers, and you have 10 other things to do, so it’s easy to let that one thing go, but it’s very important. We’d come in and realize the bookkeeping needed to be done, but we have no experience and every day we didn’t do it, it would pile up. It felt like a lot and it was intimidating." 

"It was a relief when Gerard’s team was able to take that over for us and set us up on a cloud-based system where we still had control over what was going on.”

In addition to freeing up their time from managing finances, Deeksha says the ability to communicate easily and efficiently with BAGE, without having to go to long meetings, has been a massive help as well. 

“The team is great. They’re very accommodating, very fast and well organized. They’ve streamlined things and there’s a system of communication so nothing gets missed. It’s all put into a computer and you can deal with it at whatever time works best for you. It’s very efficient when you have a busy schedule and a lot of competing responsibilities–it gives you flexibility in doing it at the time that works best for you and not feeling like you have to do it at a certain time.”