MSL305

Guest Session 3
Dr. Sashi Reddy
Submitted By - Sourav Bansal (2018CS50421)

Building Global SaaS startups from India

Indian ecosystem is on the rise in the last decade. Indian startup ecosystem’s large
chunk consists of common consumer stuff based applications which might seem
obvious. Areas like energy, renewables etc are less explored. The first wave of
Indian Companies were replicas of US and Chinese companies like Amazon, Alibaba
and Flipkart. However, today we have companies which are unique to Indian
consumer base. These include Milkbasket, meesha, udaan, shaadi.com etc. These
were unique to the society and relied on Indian culture and habits. Like the
Shaadi.com has a very India specific model since we don’t have arranged marriages
at most places in other countries.

Enterprise Software is software sold to businesses, by businesses (B2B). They help

in automation, are complex and require deep domain knowledge. Many old school
giant companies work in enterprises. For example, services for HR to manage
employees in tens of countries, hundreds of offices and thousands of departments.

SaaS comparison
A decade ago, software was deployed at the customer site and took a long time to
customize and personalize. Moreover, it was expensive, with big upfront fees.
However, the companies always had a risk of market changes which may destroy
the working model of these companies since they are hard to change.
Today, softwares are being deployed on the cloud. The deployment is very fast,
cheap and fairly easy. Updates are instant and softwares adapts easily to the
market changes. Payments are service based with very less or no upfront
payments.

Business of SaaS
You pay as you go! Business in SaaS is marketing driven with small average costs.
The support, billing is remote with a limited role of the salesforce or technical team.
SaaS is a perfect opportunity for Indian Startups. We can make software for anyone
anywhere in the world. However, Indian buyers are traditional which is the reason
why Saas has not seen much growth in India. People want sales and even the CEO
to come and meet them. They are willing to pay upfront fees, that is, one time cost
but do not want to take it on credit.

Breaking it down for SaaS

Look at target customers, whether Enterprise or SME. Identify target users, like
many companies in recent years have come up with solutions with special focus on
programmers. Geography of customers also needs to be researched.
Indian SaaS unicorns - Zoho, Freshworks, Druva, Icertis, High Radius, Postman,
Zenoti. Freshworks is a SaaS company which serves US customers while sitting in
India. Postman is the first Indian Unicorn focused on programmers. Zenoti is a
vertical SaaS which focuses on a very particular segment (spas).

Ideal for Indian SaaS startups

Target: SMEs, Business users or developer, vertical, US
Building a company for tech users is not easy. So, if the team is highly experienced
in tech (tech gurus), targeting developers is a good option. Else with a creative
team, one should go for business users.
For large enterprises, bottom up is the right one. Spoon shot is a vertical company
which targets food scientists. They provide them with food intelligence, like who
else is making similar foods around the world, which special ingredients are used,
the hot products, essentially what serves as the food brain for these scientists.

US First Model
For being successful in the US market, the apps must have a phenomenal U/X. The
pricing needs to be transparent. The servicing needs to be remote which needs
physical interference. SaaS must be marketing driven, not sales driven.

Making a MVP is important to show investors you are really serious and have
knowledge of the field. The SaaS startup team needs the tech people and the
marketing people.