Subho Halder, the Co-founder and CTO at Appknox, shares the company’s plans to create a recurring revenue through Software as a Service (SaaS) in India. Appknox provides mobile security testing that uses automated tests to detect and fix vulnerabilities in mobile applications. It is a powerful solution for securing Plug and Play mobile applications and is trusted by businesses around the world. Moreover, it is listed on the Gartner Mobile App Security Testing Solution List and can easily integrate into existing security strategies.
In the Value SaaS Series, businesses that are on their way to their first million are introduced or increased small external investments to generate recurring revenue. During this period, the focus is to iterate quickly to create a recurring revenue that can be scaled to $10 million or more. These businesses grow and prosper rapidly by accessing and deploying founder-owned capital.
Value SaaS Businesses are organizations that can generate $1 of revenue through less than $1 of spend. Appknox aims to join the ranks of successful Value SaaS startups such as Veeva, Zoho, MailChimp, Atlassian, BrowserStack, and even Salesforce, who have all made more than $1 million in Annual Recurring Revenue (ARR) with less than $1 million in spend.
The Value SaaS Series in association with Upekkha and supported by Chargebee offers guidance and support for businesses looking to create a recurring revenue through SaaS in India. With the right strategies and support, businesses like Appknox can achieve success in the highly competitive SaaS market.
More on recurring revenue here and on how to use data to improve your sales cycle
Varun Jain believes that a predictable sales cycle is critical for the success of any business, especially those in the SaaS industry. Here are some success strategies that he suggests for building a predictable sales cycle:
Identify your target customers: Before starting the sales process, it’s essential to identify your target customers. Who are they? What are their pain points? How can your product or service solve their problems? Once you have a clear understanding of your target customers, you can create targeted marketing campaigns and sales strategies that will resonate with them.
Build a sales funnel: A sales funnel is a visual representation of the steps that your potential customers go through to become paying customers. It typically consists of four stages: awareness, interest, decision, and action. By building a sales funnel, you can track your potential customers’ progress through each stage and identify areas where they may be dropping off.
Use data to make informed decisions: In today’s digital age, data is everything. By collecting and analyzing data from your sales process, you can make informed decisions that will help you optimize your sales cycle. For example, if you notice that a particular marketing campaign isn’t generating many leads, you can adjust your strategy accordingly.
Train your sales team: Your sales team is the face of your company. They need to be knowledgeable about your products, services, and target customers. By investing in regular training and coaching for your sales team, you can ensure that they are equipped to handle any situation that may arise during the sales process.
Use technology to streamline the sales process: There are many tools available today that can help streamline the sales process, such as customer relationship management (CRM) software, marketing automation tools, and sales enablement platforms. By leveraging technology, you can automate repetitive tasks, track customer interactions, and provide your sales team with the tools they need to close more deals.
By following these success strategies, you can build a predictable sales cycle that will generate revenue, build your customer base, and help you scale your business to new heights.
In this video, Shubhra Srivastava shares how her SaaS company, GaragePlug, is delivering value to its customers. She highlights the importance of focusing on customers to increase their value and grow the business. The value a customer receives is determined by the benefits of a product or service minus its costs.
Shubhra explains that GaragePlug provides value to customers by creating a pleasant consumer experience and operational excellence for car repair workshops. One of the most significant benefits of adding value to customers is that they become your brand ambassadors, promoting your product or service to others.
Shubhra also reflects on the moment; when they realized they had a customer who was selling their product for them. This moment highlights the importance of creating a product or service that customers love and find valuable.
GaragePlug is looking to disrupt the automobile industry by providing value to its customers. Know more about customers for your SaaS business here and here.
Subho Haldar, CTO and Co-founder of Appknox, a company providing security for mobile applications, discusses the importance of finding the right customers for their product in order to achieve product market fit. In the video, he emphasizes the fundamentals of this concept and how it is crucial for start-ups, especially in the Value SaaS industry.
Initially, Appknox targeted developers as their potential customers. However, they realized that focusing on chief security information officers would be more effective in meeting the needs of their market. This involved segmenting the entire market into smaller groups consisting of potential customers with similar needs and behaviours.
As a company in the Value SaaS series, Appknox specializes in businesses that bootstrap or raise small external investments to iterate rapidly and create a growth engine for scaling to $10Mn and beyond. By accessing and deploying founder-ownership friendly capital, they are able to grow quickly and thrive.
Value SaaS Series in association with Upekkha and supported by Chargebee
Success and growth are intertwined when it comes to SaaS products. While achieving success is important, sustaining it requires consistent growth. To reduce the time it takes to develop a SaaS product, it’s recommended to use discovery-based planning that involves tests and experiments, rather than complicated planning. Iterative design, focusing on lean features and continuous iteration, is preferable over traditional development phases.
Kalyan Verma, Co-Founder and CEO at Almabase, stresses the importance of building lean features in this video. As engineers, the initial instinct is often to build more features. However, it’s essential to analyze the data and determine which features are working and which are not. Entrepreneurship is a characteristic management process, but traditional methods only work when the problem and solution are known. Today, SaaS product design is more situational, as the problems are often not known beforehand.
In conclusion, building lean features is crucial for success and growth in SaaS products. By embracing iterative design and continuous iteration, SaaS companies can achieve sustainable success and growth.
Value SaaS Series in association with Upekkha and supported by Chargebee
Upekkha Accelerator’s Prasanna Krishnamoorthy and Shekar Nair introduce the first video in the Value SaaS Series, where they discuss what Value SaaS is and its current relevance. The series aims to assist businesses in their journey towards achieving their first million, whether by bootstrapping or securing external investments. These businesses iterate quickly to develop a growth engine that can scale to $10Mn and beyond. With access to founder-friendly capital, they can grow quickly and thrive.
A Value SaaS Business is one that can generate $1 of revenue for every $1 spent or less. Startups such as Veeva, Zoho, MailChimp, Atlassian, BrowserStack, and even Salesforce are all considered to be part of the Value SaaS community, having achieved more than $1 Mn in Annual Recurring Revenue with less than $1 Million in spend.
The prevalence of Software as a Service (SaaS) is continuing to increase, with Indian Value SaaS businesses poised to surpass Vanity SaaS globally. The Value SaaS Series is the beginning of a comprehensive resource for businesses seeking to succeed in the world of Value SaaS.
Almabase is a software solution that addresses the problem of underutilizing alumni networks and inefficiencies in funding within educational institutions. It simplifies community management with its all-in-one alumni relations platform.
Appknox provides top-notch mobile security services to ensure that businesses are not affected by security fixes that can potentially ruin their operations. The platform identifies software vulnerabilities and helps customers qualify for security audits successfully.
Chargebee is an integrated subscription management platform that simplifies billing and invoicing by merging various payment gateways. The platform takes care of administrative bottlenecks, allowing SaaS founders to focus on growth and customer satisfaction.
Garage Plug is an end-to-end workshop management software that automates inventory, billing, marketing, vendor management, and other garage services. The platform assists in business branding and customer satisfaction through online communication and service upgrades.
Minjar provides innovative solutions for cloud management and security issues, thus saving millions for its customers. The company has acquired an ARR of $1 million early in its life, inspiring many value SaaS startups.
Nittio Learn is an ed tech startup that offers an online training platform for employees to enhance their skills without impacting their regular jobs. The platform provides continuous and updated skill enhancement programs in various areas, including process management, policies, operations, and sales.
Ripplehire is an innovative Saas platform that focuses on efficient hiring and recognizing talent wealth in the existing workforce. The platform assists in employee referrals, engagement, internal job mobility, and talent branding, benefiting both recruiters and applicants.
QDC Software offers premier automation services to dry cleaning and laundry businesses, enabling profitability and the ultimate customer experience. The platform addresses speed and accurate tagging concerns, which are crucial in this industry.
SendX is an affordable and easy-to-use Saas platform that provides optimal email marketing services to more than 3000 customers. The platform allows businesses to design personalized mail content, automate email sequences, and manage contacts efficiently.
Tagalys provides intelligent search services for e-commerce entities to improve their conversion rate. The platform handles semantic queries proactively, saving customers time.
Talview is advanced Instahiring software that reduces recruitment hurdles for businesses by enabling remote interviews, assessment tests, and automated scheduling.
