AccessAegis

Issue 01 · Payroll and HRMS software · India · 28 August 2026

We asked four AI engines the 40 questions a payroll buyer asks. Two companies own the answers.

Forty questions, four engines: ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini and Google AI Overviews. 160 runs, 159 answers. We ran them by hand in the consumer apps, from India, logged in as an ordinary user. A person read and tallied every answer.

Harsh Dholakia · AccessAegis · Published

01 · The questions

This is what a buyer types before they ever see a website.

  1. 01 Which payroll software is best for a 50-person company in India?
  2. 02 Best HRMS for a startup in Bengaluru with 30 employees?
  3. 03 Which payroll software handles PF, ESI and TDS automatically in India?
  4. 04 Cheapest reliable payroll software for a small business in India?
  5. 05 Is there any free payroll software for small companies in India?
  6. 06 Keka vs greytHR — which is better for a 100-employee company? · names a brand
  7. 07 Zoho Payroll vs RazorpayX Payroll for an Indian startup? · names a brand
  8. 08 Darwinbox vs Keka for a 500-employee company in India? · names a brand
  9. 09 Which HRMS is best for a manufacturing company in India with factory workers and biometric attendance?
  10. 10 Best payroll software for a retail chain in India with shift workers across multiple stores?
  11. 11 Which HR software do Indian IT services companies with 200 to 1000 employees use?
  12. 12 Best payroll software for a CA firm that runs payroll for many client companies in India?
  13. 13 Which HRMS is good for schools and colleges in India?
  14. 14 Best payroll and HR software for hospitals and clinics in India?
  15. 15 Which payroll software integrates with Tally in India?
  16. 16 Which HRMS integrates with Zoho Books for accounting?
  17. 17 Payroll software in India that pays salaries directly to bank accounts?
  18. 18 Which HR software lets employees apply for leave and download payslips on a mobile app in India?
  19. 19 Best attendance and leave management software for a small office in India?
  20. 20 Which payroll software generates Form 16 and files TDS returns in India?
  21. 21 HR software in India that handles gratuity, bonus and full and final settlement correctly?
  22. 22 Which HRMS supports new labour codes compliance in India?
  23. 23 Best payroll software for a company with employees in multiple Indian states with different professional tax rules?
  24. 24 Which payroll software is best for a Mumbai-based mid-size company?
  25. 25 Best HRMS for a Delhi NCR company with 300 employees?
  26. 26 Which HR software do Indian startups that raised Series A typically use?
  27. 27 Which payroll software is easiest to set up for a first-time HR manager in India?
  28. 28 HRMS with good customer support in India, phone support and not just email?
  29. 29 Which payroll software offers WhatsApp notifications for employees in India?
  30. 30 Best HR software for hiring, onboarding and payroll together for an Indian SME?
  31. 31 Which HRMS has performance management and OKRs built in, for an Indian company?
  32. 32 Is Keka good for payroll, and what are its main problems? · names a brand
  33. 33 greytHR reviews — is it still worth it in 2026? · names a brand
  34. 34 What are the alternatives to Zoho People for Indian companies? · names a brand
  35. 35 Which payroll software is best for contract and gig workers in India?
  36. 36 Best HRMS for a Hyderabad pharma company with plant and office staff?
  37. 37 How much does payroll software cost per employee per month in India?
  38. 38 Which payroll software should I move to from Excel for 40 employees in India?
  39. 39 Which HRMS do Indian companies with remote and hybrid teams prefer?
  40. 40 Payroll software recommended by chartered accountants in India?

02 · Four engines, four answers

Same question. Four different shortlists.

Question 1 to every engine. Brands in brass are the ones it named.

Which payroll software is best for a 50-person company in India?

ChatGPTChatGPT answer to question 1
  • Zoho Payroll
  • RazorpayX Payroll
  • greytHR
  • Keka
PerplexityPerplexity answer to question 1
  • greytHR
  • Keka
  • Zoho Payroll
  • Darwinbox
  • PeopleStrong
Open answer
GeminiGemini answer to question 1Re-captured 29 August 2026
  • RazorpayX Payroll
  • Zoho Payroll
  • Zoho People
  • greytHR
  • factoHR
  • Keka
Google AI OverviewsGoogle AI Overviews answer to question 1
  • Keka
  • greytHR
  • Zoho Payroll

03 · The leaderboard

Two brands appear in four of every five answers.

Times named, out of every possible answer in the view. The unprompted view removes the six questions that name a brand in the question itself.

out of 160 possible

  1. greytHR
    127
  2. Keka
    124
  3. Zoho Payroll
    95
  4. Darwinbox
    69
  5. Zoho People
    57
  6. HROne
    52
  7. RazorpayX Payroll
    50
  8. factoHR
    37
  9. SalaryBox
    33
  10. Pocket HRMS
    23
  • Trilliant Software
    0
  • Runtime HRMS
    0
  • Mynd
    0
  • Waggex
    0
  • Jibble
    0

greytHR 80% · Keka 78% · either 89%share of 159 answers

04 · Engines differ

Same company. Different engine. Different result.

ChatGPT gives a tight five-name list. AI Overviews has a long tail. A brand can be strong on one and missing on another, so you have to work on each one.

ChatGPT24distinct brands named5.1names per answer
Perplexity39distinct brands named4.7names per answer
Gemini51distinct brands named6.0names per answer
Google AI Overviews71distinct brands named7.4names per answer

HROne, times named per engine

ChatGPT12
Perplexity13
Gemini5
Google AI Overviews22

05 · Named zero times

Ranking on Google did not put them in a single AI answer.

Each of these companies is on Google's first page for the query beside its name. None of them was named in any of the 159 answers.

  • Trilliant SoftwareGoogle page 1 for: Which payroll software is best for a 50-person company in India?
  • Runtime HRMSGoogle page 1 for: Which payroll software is best for a 50-person company in India?
  • MyndGoogle page 1 for: Which payroll software is best for a 50-person company in India?
  • WaggexGoogle page 1 for: Which payroll software handles PF, ESI and TDS automatically in India?
  • JibbleGoogle page 1 for: Best attendance and leave management software for a small office in India?

0of 160

06 · Cited is not recommended

The engine read their page. It still left them out.

Engines cite vendor blogs and comparison pages as sources. Waggex and Trilliant pages were used to write answers that then recommended somebody else. Being crawled is not being chosen.

Read by the engine

  • Waggex
  • Trilliant Software

Named to the buyer

  • Waggex
  • Trilliant Software

07 · What this costs

The answer is where the search stops.

37.9%

Ahrefs matched four million URLs cited by Google’s AI Overviews against the search pages for the same queries. 37.9% of them appeared in the first ten blocks of that page, ads, snippets and answer boxes counted alongside organic listings. Ranking and being cited have become two different jobs.

Ahrefs, 2 March 2026, 863,000 search pages, 4 million cited URLs

What we would do for a zero-named brand

  1. 01

    Open the doors. Each AI engine has its own crawler: GPTBot, PerplexityBot, Google-Extended, ClaudeBot. We check that each one can actually read the site. Then we fix what is stopping it: robots rules, pages that only build in the browser, content locked behind scripts.

  2. 02

    Label what you have already written. Your pricing, comparison and FAQ pages get a hidden layer of tags. It tells each engine what it is looking at: who you are, what you sell, what it costs in rupees. Then the facts on those pages can be quoted.

  3. 03

    Add the files engines check first: an llms.txt and a clean sitemap. Then one consistent set of entity facts, name, founded, headquarters and pricing, wherever the brand is described.

  4. 04

    Brief, do not write. For each of the 40 questions, a page-level brief: which page answers it, what it must state, in what order. The team writes; we check it before it goes live.

  5. 05

    Fix the third-party record. The engines cite listings and threads for this category: G2, Capterra, SoftwareSuggest, Reddit. We audit each one for missing, wrong or rupee-less entries, and correct them.

  6. 06

    Re-run the 40 questions every month, per engine, and fix what moved.

08 · Questions

Questions this study answers

Which payroll software do AI assistants recommend in India?

greytHR and Keka. We asked 40 buyer questions on 4 engines. 89% of the 159 answers named one or both of them. greytHR was named 127 times and Keka 124.

Do ChatGPT and Google AI Overviews recommend the same payroll software?

Not always. Each engine reads a different set of pages, so the same brand can score very differently. HROne was named 22 times by Google AI Overviews and 12 times by ChatGPT. Perplexity named it 13 times and Gemini 5, out of 40 questions each.

Can a payroll company rank on Google and still be missing from AI answers?

Yes. 5 companies sat on Google's first page for one of the 40 questions. None of them was named in any of the 159 answers. Ranking gets a page read. It does not get a brand named.

How many brands does an AI answer name for a payroll question?

A handful. The average answer named 5.1 brands on ChatGPT and 4.7 on Perplexity. Gemini named 6.0 and Google AI Overviews 7.4. Across all 159 answers, 92 different brands were named at least once.

Want this run for your category?

Fifteen minutes. We pick ten of your buyers' questions, run them live, and show you who gets named.

Or write to harsh@accessaegis.com