Dev Khare pens down succinctly what we are seeing play out in the markets over the last few years. India holds massive potential for SaaS companies or as I usually put it, "Revenue Garden in their Own Engineering Backyard". We will see the next Salesforce, Adobe, Palo Alto's of the world, emerge from India. Bet Long on India SaaS Story!
Partner at Lightspeed | Investor in software/digital startups originating in India/SE Asia
Here's one more theme that has played out over the past decade in India SaaS: SaaS companies that sell into India/Asia (non-China/Japan). There's been a reasonably large set of investors in India who have been default no in this category, based on perception of limited TAM and GTM challenges. However, there is reason to be optimistic for this theme (we are!). A reasonable set of companies in the ecosystem have scaled, such as MoEngage, Darwinbox, Capillary Technologies, Yellow.ai, Unicommerce , Gupshup, CRMNEXT, LeadSquared. Companies like Salesforce, SAP etc have reached multi-hundred million ARR in India. As a result, the potential scale from sales in India has grown from the $15-20mm that people used to talk about 5 years back to perhaps $50mm in India, overall $100mm-150mm in Asia. I think we'll see more companies continue to get funded here as IT demand in India/SEA deepens and local requirements (mobile, India Stack, regulations, languages) get addressed. Founders and investors will need to tune into this being a solid path to go but will take longer to get to impact than US/EU-focused companies. Some characteristics we see at India/SEA-facing software companies: * Many start out in SMB but then find scale & success selling into enterprises. India market has a ton of SMBs (10mm+), a relatively light mid-market and a significant set of large enterprises. * Products tend to have feature sprawl and design-deficit but this can be fixed. * Some large sectors that are pulling at enterprise level e.g. BFSI, multi-sector conglomerates. Early traction from digital native companies (but naturally capped market). * Natural to go to SEA & Gulf countries. Product could remain fairly similar but sales & marketing motion can be quite different. To get really large, feels like will have to end up going to US/EU markets eventually. * ~10 years to $100mm ARR, with market leadership in Asia * Gross margins start out perhaps 10-15 points lower than corresponding companies in the US/EU but trend up over time. * Most India-facing SaaS companies are starting as India Pvt. Ltd. today, compared to 5 years ago (versus US C-corp), with a view to going public in India at $50-100mm revenue level.
