The Rise of Indian SaaS — Wired for Growth
The building blocks of a good software product and an ecosystem that works, are quite similar; both need different pieces to come together and deliver results, no matter how diverse their backgrounds are.
The foundation of India’s SaaS industry has been a combination of software products, platforms, combined with the transcending power of delivering software from the cloud, from anywhere.
Where are the software products? This question has been asked again and again over the past few decades.
The Indian SaaS industry is uniquely positioned to take advantage of this $400Bn untapped opportunity given the competitive edge it gained organically for a number of reasons — the IT Services boom that lead to the development of an in-depth understanding of technology that goes into building great products, a highly skilled workforce and of course, the English-speaking proposition.
The rate at which the Indian SaaS industry has evolved, the $100 Mn ARR may not be an elusive goal for many for long. With rapid adoption, opportunity and funding, there is little doubt the current crop of SaaS startups will outperform the companies that came before them — despite the recent circumstances.
Having demonstrated our ability to build and sell software products from India, it is time we studied the makings of a scalable SaaS company.
With newer opportunities come newer challenges
The quest to achieve sustainable and profitable growth often comes with its own share of competition and unfamiliar but common challenges that we see time and again. With collective insights and awareness, we believe these challenges can be addressed proactively.
To this end, NASSCOM and SaaSBOOMi have come together and published an in-depth research study of this rapidly growing Indian SaaS ecosystem, its key players, market trends and more, while identifying gaps for the Indian SaaS industry to explore.
SaaS the new normal
For an entrepreneur looking at growing their start-up into a global powerhouse you’re probably wondering if it makes sense to think about growth at times like this when the focus this year seems to be only on keeping the business afloat. This study indicates that if anything, the pandemic is reshaping priorities and accelerating digital consumption — making SaaS the new normal.
Takeaway from the takeaways
The recommendations in this report have been carefully curated with key insights from some of the best brains in the Indian SaaS industry. In this report we intend to decode growth for the Indian SaaS industry with strategies focused on product, pricing and GTM that could be adopted to help address multiple growth objectives — be it market access, talent, entrepreneurship, intellectual property or situational collaborations.
Some of the insights in the study are based on previously overlooked aspects of the larger ecosystem that go a long way in establishing a sustained route towards ensuring continued growth. It could be market access, intellectual property, situational collaborations, and more.
This is no ‘playbook’
While it’s not an easy task encapsulating all the deep learnings and insights collected in one report, we certainly hope that this report proves to be a step in the right direction and it helps shine some much-needed light on overcoming the challenge of scaling a SaaS business.
Having said that, businesses are not very different from people, no two are alike. There are several variables involved, and it’s entirely up to businesses how they take the learnings and mould them as per their industry and growth objectives.
It’s never the right time. Carpe Diem.
As I write this, millions of children are learning math with games, some of the biggest Fortune 500 companies are managing their contracts and making sense of their data, reimagining their supply chains, and so on — all powered by India’s SaaS products.
“Today, from Zoho to Freshworks, BrowserStack, Postman, Druva to Eka, and so on, India has enough software products that are the building blocks of a new industry built on products that rival the world’s best. And, the success of Indian SaaS industry is rooted in how we continue to share, pivot, and innovate which will be key to our ability to build a stronger product nation in the future. This report sets out really well where we are in the present, and where we are going to be very soon. The distance between this present and that future will be covered by the work we do. I hope this report serves as a manifesto to get started.”
Shout-out to the presentations.ai team who helped us make this wonderful presentation.
