India has the potential to resolve outstanding issues in the B2B SaaS industry, particularly in the realm of Value SaaS, as opposed to Vanity SaaS. Currently, Indian SaaS product makers mainly thrive on the global market rather than domestically. The Indian IT industry has an annual growth rate of 8%, currently standing at $167 billion. However, not all revenues are equal, and to become a global center of SaaS, India needs to leverage its deep expertise in virtually every vertical area built over the past few decades through the IT services boom.
While India may not be well-positioned in the global SaaS space, it can draw inspiration from Chennai’s successful SaaS model. The creation of a mothership like Zoho in every city could be a significant step towards creating value and building the trillion-dollar business potential that the industry offers.
Suresh Sambandam, founder, and COO of OrangeScape, a home-grown SaaS solutions provider, discussed the trillion-dollar opportunity in the SaaS business. OrangeScape, a cloud pioneer based in India, is among ten global platform-as-a-service companies and has been featured in Gartner and Forrester reports. Suresh Sambandam has been an entrepreneur since the age of 19.
Start-ups that generate $1 in revenue for less than $1 are considered Value SaaS businesses. Examples of successful Value SaaS start-ups include Veeva, Zoho, Mail Chimp, Alessiani, BrowserStack, and even Salesforce. These start-ups have achieved over one million ARR with less than one million dollars in funding. India has the potential to create more such success stories in the Value SaaS industry by leveraging its IT services expertise and creating a supportive ecosystem.
Value SaaS Series in association with Upekkha and supported by Chargebee
Will be happy to see you in Calcutta and get more SaaS companies out of here