If you’re comparing Petpooja Payroll and Keka, here’s the short answer. They’re built for different businesses. Keka is a full HR suite for mid-sized corporates. Petpooja Payroll is a focused attendance-to-salary system for SMEs like restaurants, retail stores, factories, and hospitals.
India’s payroll services market stood at USD 1.78 billion in 2025. It’s expected to reach USD 2.74 billion by 2031 (Mordor Intelligence, 2025). On top of that, 6.5 crore MSMEs employ over 28 crore people across the country (PIB, 2025). With that many businesses and workers, picking the right payroll tool matters.
So which one fits your business? Here’s a side-by-side breakdown.
Key Takeaways
- Keka is an HR suite for corporates (performance reviews, OKRs, hiring); Petpooja Payroll is a focused payroll system for SMEs
- Petpooja Payroll includes in-house biometric hardware with lifetime warranty; Keka relies on third-party devices
- Keka starts at Rs 9,000/month base + Rs 99/employee; Petpooja Payroll offers fixed-cost pricing without per-employee fees
- For operations-heavy businesses (restaurants, retail, manufacturing), Petpooja Payroll is the more practical choice
What Does Each Platform Actually Do?
Both tools process salaries and track attendance. But they’re aimed at very different users.
Keka is a broad HR platform. It bundles payroll with performance reviews, OKRs (Objectives and Key Results), hiring tools, and a learning system. Over 10,000 companies use it. Most of them are mid-sized firms with 50 to 500 employees in tech, pharma, and banking.
Petpooja Payroll is a focused payroll system. It connects attendance hardware (biometric devices, face scanners) directly to salary processing. No extra HR modules you won’t use. Over 30,000 businesses run on it, including restaurants, retail chains, factories, hospitals, and quick commerce operations.
Here’s the real difference. If you need performance reviews and goal tracking, Keka has them. But if you need a biometric device that syncs attendance straight to payroll without third-party tools breaking, Petpooja Payroll does that. Most SME owners we’ve spoken to across 50+ businesses in Mumbai, Ahmedabad, and Pune don’t need performance management software. They need attendance and salary to work without errors. Every single month.
For a detailed look at everything Petpooja Payroll offers, see our guide on key features of Petpooja Payroll.
How Do Petpooja Payroll and Keka Compare on Features?
Only 12% of Indian companies have payroll systems ready for the future (ADP “The Potential of Payroll 2026”, 2025). In other words, 88% of businesses still use systems that fall short. So how do these two tools compare?
Here’s how they stack up:
| Feature | Petpooja Payroll | Keka |
|---|---|---|
| Attendance tracking | Biometric, face scanner, mobile app (geo-tagged) | Biometric, GPS, selfie, IP-based, facial recognition |
| Biometric hardware | In-house devices with lifetime warranty | No in-house hardware; third-party integration |
| Salary calculation | Auto from attendance + leave + overtime | Auto from attendance + leave + overtime |
| PF/ESIC compliance | Yes (PF, ESIC, PT, LWF) | Yes (PF, ESIC, PT, LWF, TDS) |
| Shift management | Flexible shift module | Shift rotations and boards |
| Mobile app | Owner app + employee app | Employee self-service app |
| WhatsApp reports | Yes | No |
| Performance management | Not included | OKRs, 360-degree reviews |
| Hiring/ATS | Not included | Available (add-on) |
| Support | 24×7 multilingual | Business hours; mixed reviews |
| Businesses served | 30,000+ | 10,000+ |
From our conversations with SME owners across restaurants, retail, and manufacturing, the features that matter most aren’t performance reviews or hiring tools. Instead, they care about reliable attendance capture, accurate salary processing, and support that picks up when something goes wrong at 11 PM on salary day.
Which System Handles Attendance and Hardware Better?
This is where the gap is widest. If attendance data is wrong, everything after it breaks. Salaries, compliance filings, reports. All of it.
Petpooja Payroll gives you its own biometric and face scanner hardware. These devices come with a lifetime warranty. They sync with the payroll software on their own. There’s no third-party vendor to deal with. No integration to fix.
Keka, on the other hand, works with 200+ third-party biometric devices. But it doesn’t make or supply any hardware itself. Users on G2 and Capterra have reported issues with data syncing and attendance corrections taking multiple steps.
For businesses with frontline workers (factory floors, restaurant kitchens, retail counters), hardware that just works isn’t a bonus. It’s the base of the entire payroll process. Our guide on how manufacturing units are digitising payroll with biometric systems covers this in detail.
How Does Pricing Compare?
India’s small-business payroll segment is growing at 16.39% CAGR, the fastest among all company sizes (as per the Mordor Intelligence report mentioned earlier). That growth means more SMEs are buying payroll tools. But the wrong pricing model can quietly drain your budget.
Keka’s pricing:
| Plan | Base Price | Per Employee |
|---|---|---|
| Foundation | Rs 9,000/month | From Rs 99/employee/month |
| Strength | Rs 12,000/month | Higher per-employee rate |
| Growth | Rs 15,000/month | Higher per-employee rate |
Add-ons like hiring, helpdesk, and learning tools cost extra. For a 50-employee business on the Foundation plan, you’d pay roughly Rs 14,000 per month or more.
Petpooja Payroll uses a fixed-cost pricing model instead. There are no per-employee charges that go up as you hire. For businesses that add seasonal staff or deal with high turnover (which is common in restaurants and retail), this makes a big difference. Read our detailed breakdown on how fixed-cost payroll pricing saves Indian SMEs.
Here’s a simple example. With Keka, your software cost rises every time you hire. A growing SME adding 10 to 20 staff per quarter would spend Rs 12,000 to Rs 24,000 extra per year on software fees alone. With Petpooja Payroll’s fixed pricing, your cost stays the same whether you have 10 employees or 100.
Who Should Choose Which?
This isn’t about which tool is “better” overall. It’s about which one fits your business type.
Choose Petpooja Payroll if you:
- Run a restaurant, retail store, factory, hospital, or quick commerce operation
- Need biometric hardware included (not sold separately)
- Want attendance-to-salary automation without extra HR modules
- Prefer fixed pricing over per-employee costs
- Need 24×7 multilingual support
Choose Keka if you:
- Run a mid-sized corporate office (50–500 employees)
- Need performance management, OKRs, and hiring tools alongside payroll
- Have an IT team to manage third-party biometric integrations
- Don’t mind per-employee pricing that scales with headcount
For more comparisons, see how Petpooja Payroll stacks up against SalaryBox and PagarGuru.
Conclusion
Keka and Petpooja Payroll serve different markets. Keka is an HR platform where payroll is one of many modules. Petpooja Payroll is a focused system that connects attendance hardware directly to salary processing. It’s built for Indian SMEs that run on shifts and frontline staff.
If your business needs biometric attendance, simple salary processing, and support that’s available around the clock, Petpooja Payroll is the more practical pick. Over 30,000 businesses already use it, including names like L&T, Zepto, ISKCON, and Mapro.
Want to see how it works? Call +91-72280 34343 or visit Petpooja Payroll. You can also explore our best payroll software for retail in India comparison for a broader view.
Frequently Asked Questions
For operations-heavy small businesses (restaurants, retail stores, factories), yes. Petpooja Payroll includes biometric hardware with lifetime warranty, offers fixed-cost pricing (no per-employee fees), and provides 24×7 multilingual support. Keka’s strength lies in full HR suites for mid-sized corporates, which most small businesses don’t need.
No. Keka doesn’t manufacture or supply biometric devices. It integrates with 200+ third-party biometric machines, but businesses must purchase hardware separately and manage the integration. Petpooja Payroll provides in-house biometric and face scanner devices with a lifetime warranty included.
Keka starts at Rs 9,000/month (Foundation plan) plus Rs 99 per employee per month. For a 50-employee company, that’s roughly Rs 14,000/month. Higher-tier plans (Strength and Growth) start at Rs 12,000 and Rs 15,000/month respectively, with additional per-employee charges.
Yes. Petpooja Payroll supports Provident Fund, Employee State Insurance, Professional Tax, and Labour Welfare Fund deductions. These are configured during setup and applied automatically each pay cycle based on the attendance and salary data already in the system.
Petpooja Payroll is purpose-built for restaurants and hospitality businesses. It handles shift scheduling, biometric attendance, overtime tracking, salary advances with auto-deductions, and WhatsApp reports. Over 1,00,000 restaurants already use the broader Petpooja ecosystem for billing, inventory, and payroll.
