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Enterprise Software Products – Big Clients, Big Opportunity

Over the past few years, there has been a lot of investment activity in the B2B Technology product space. One can broadly classify B2B Tech into two categories based on the size of the end clients, and the delivery model (on-premise or Cloud).

End Customer      Mid-Large Enterprises      SMEs
Typical Delivery Model      On Premise      SaaS

Most of the recent investment activity in the B2B Tech space has primarily been in “SaaS”. This is because SaaS products are relatively easier to scale globally as against Enterprise Software products. Some of the drivers for this are as follows:

  Enterprise Software SaaS
New Customer Acquisition (High Cost) Sales Team Driven Digital Marketing (backed by Inside Sales)
Sales Cycles 3 months – 9 months 2 weeks – 1 month
Enterprise “Buyer” Multiple business heads & CIO, CEO / Board Single Business Head (directly impacted)
Integrations & Customizations Needs “Services” Primarily DIY
Recurring Revenue % Low – Typically just the AMC (10%-20%) (not counting the “upselling”) High – Periodic subscription based

That being said, we see a huge opportunity for Indian Enterprise Software product companies. The “edge” such companies have over typical SaaS companies are as follows:

  • Only a handful of global players are fighting it out for the larger clients. For example, in case of Enterprise CRM, the primary competition is from Oracle Siebel, Microsoft Dynamics, Salesforce (for large enterprises that are comfortable with SaaS), and SAP. In case of Contact Center Software, it is from Avaya, Cisco, Aspect & Genesys. In contrast, for most SaaS products, the vendor market is quite cluttered since the barriers to entry (and exit) are much lesser for SaaS products.
  • Incumbents in Enterprise Software are large (and relatively slow moving) firms with “legacy” products. Large enterprises have seen lesser innovation as compared to SMEs – immense opportunity to be nimble-footed and have a more contemporary product platform for the younger product companies in this space.
  • Enterprise Software platforms are typically more comprehensive and feature-rich, whereas SaaS offerings are relatively more of “point” solutions.
  • As a result, an Enterprise Software vendor has greater opportunities to expand and penetrate into adjacent add-on offerings, with great ease.
  • Higher customer stability – typically much lesser churn, since the integrations and customizations are an ‘investment’ and provide stickiness to the vendor.
  • India is a great place to start. Getting large Indian enterprises as customers and then expanding overseas (to other developing regions like South East Asia, Middle East and Africa) is a trend we keep seeing.
  • While in developed markets, even large enterprises have adopted the Cloud infrastructure and software as integral to their businesses; in India the mid-to-large enterprises are still in the early-cycle of Cloud adoption.

So if you are an Enterprise Software company, and are looking to raise funding, what are some key aspects from a VC fund raising perspective? Here are a few that we at Zanskar Advisors have learnt from our past engagements:

  • Revenue Scale already achieved: The bars seem to be higher for Enterprise Software companies as compared to SaaS. For e.g. an Enterprise Software firm would need to have approximately $ 5 mm of revenue to attract similar amount of funding (for similar dilution) as a SaaS product firm can attract with say $ 2 mm (that too on an annualized run-rate basis).
  • Established Partnerships (especially for overseas customer acquisition / servicing): As the “expansion” would be primarily coming from overseas, some instances of selling to overseas customers (preferably through channel partners – as direct sales are less scalable) will help.
  • Instances of displacing established incumbents (large product companies) at key accounts (for reasons other than just the cost).
  • Revenue Trends
    • % of Product Revenue (License + AMC) as against Services revenue (upward trend is favorable)
    • % Revenue from top x (say 5) clients (downward trend is favorable)
    • % Revenue through Partners (upward trend is favorable)
    • Average Revenue per Customer (an indicator of “upselling” – could be in terms of no. of users or no. of modules – upward trend is favorable)
  • Global Recognition (from the likes of Gartner, Forrester etc.) is a plus

We strongly believe that a new wave of Enterprise Software product companies from India is going to take on the world – in line with the thesis of “Make in India” (and sell globally).

Guest Post contributed by Mandar Kulkarni, Zanskar Advisors

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Announcing the Working Group on IT Security

siber640e_0With the growing penetration of technology, Internet, and digital medium, there is an increasing need for protecting critical infrastructure of the country. If compromised, these infrastructure can bring down the entire nation to stand still. With the nation going Digital India and the Prime Minister himself talking about security frequently, and challenging Indian citizens to create products that will server the nation and the world, we at iSPIRT are taking this
opportunity to create / develop / nurture the IT Security products, entrepreneurs involved in it, and product companies in the country.

We see a great opportunity for budding entrepreneurs to take this challenge and develop new products, small companies to find their niche and create a larger market for themselves, medium size companies to scale and become bigger, and large companies letting their employees to contribute in their individual / expert capacity. Keeping
iSPIRT’s vision in making India a Product Nation, we have created a Working Group on IT Security. We hope to get the support from all the relevant stakeholders. You can find more details about the program here.

Initiative Co-Hosted by Bikash Barai{iVIZ} & Ponnurangam Kumaraguru (PK) {IIIT-Delhi}

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Product Management for Startups and Understanding Growth #Playbookrt52

It was a rainy Monsoon Delhi day with heavy downpour, traffic jams and water logging but these couldn’t keep a bunch of entrepreneurs from making it in time to the Product Nation Roundtable focused on Product Management and Growth Hacking.

Led by Round Table veteran who has done it all and scaled Slideshare to great heights, Amit Ranjan, the excite bunch got together in the lovely office of Posist.

The round table kicked off with discussion around Product Management with Amit discussing his learnings and unfolding carious aspects around it step by step.

He defined Product Management as the function that manages the product life cycle through activities like planning, forecasting, production, marketing and has flavours of engineering, design, sales, marketing, data etc.

No matter what the stage of the company is, Product management is relevant, it is carried out by Founders is small startups (say less than 10 in strength) and then there are multiple product managers in big companies.

Important takeaway: “A Product Manager should be the CEO of the product” – Amit Ranjan

443b5ffef7b5079d7b20822404fd3124“A great product manager has the brain of an engineer, the heart of a designer, and the speech of a diplomat”

The group further analysed many examples of startups such as Uber, Twitter, Slideshare etc. around a model shared by Amit depicting 3 pillars of Product Management which are:

  • Vision
    • align org goals with market conditions & user needs
    • ‘get’ the pulse of the product (think movie directors)
  • Design
    • give shape to the product: feature mix, user experience
  • Execution
    • work with engineering, quality, marketing to deliver

However, a common issue cited by many founders was the issue of making the right hire for such role. The group identified and discussed the various aspects that must be considered while making a hire for the role :

  • Strong product sense/instinct
  • Carries multiple points of views
  • Communicates clearly
  • Simplifies & prioritizes
  • Measures & iterates
  • Understands good design
  • Writes effective copy

The second half of the Round Table was focused around Virality and the art of Growth Hacking with Amit sharing many interesting anecdotes and case studies.

Amit defined Virality as “Marketing built into the product…if the product is viral, it will market itself.

It is different from Word of Mouth, Marketing, Buzz etc and is simply the ability of the product to spread on its own. The role of a Marketer is to enable the product to do so and leverage different mediums to do so.

In Slideshare’s case, it was widgets that worked out very well for distribution. Amit emphasised to a great extent the importance of cracking and working on distribution right from the get go. The ideal scenario of working deeply on product (engagement) as well as channels (distribution) is hardly realised. It is a call that the entrepreneur has to take and has its own pros and cons. In Slideshare’s case, the heavy focus on distribution instead of deep diving into product development to a greater extent helped them erect barrier against new competitors/clones who tried to differentiate with added media support but could not pick up. As a negative, Slideshare faced issues in motivation as it never made users compulsively log in or create deeper engagement on the platform.

1e742688c80a7e0d19ccbafabe8ee071Amit emphasised the importance of tracking the product’s viral coefficient which is the number of additional members every new member brings. It should be greater than 1 for the product to become viral.

Viral Growth

The participants at the Roundtable were:

  1. Ashish Tulsian @posist.com (Host)
  2. Shashwat Srivastava @iflylabs.com
  3. Saurabh Arora @airwoot.com>
  4. Siddharth Deswal @wingify.com>
  5. Rahul Batra @getwalkon.com>
  6. Sujan Deswal @adpushup.com>
  7. Ankit Singh @aprogift.com>
  8. Amir Moin @contify.com>
  9. Sudhanshu Aggarwal @fizzysoftware.com>
  10. Amit Ghasghase <[email protected]>
  11. Mrigank Tripathi @qustn.com
  12. Udit Sajjanhar @splashmath.com

Founders share their own growth hack stories and channels’ learnings. For majority, in the B2B scenario, content marketing has worked well to boost the acquisition and few discussed the idea of generating leads from fake Linkedin profiles!

Amit cautioned that one should always be looking out for new channels as a channel that’s working for you today will saturate soon.

The group got some great insights and takeaways to implement from product management and growth’s perspective. Ashish’s hospitality at Posist with amazing Cholley Bhature was cherry on top of the cake

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FinTech-Tech: The future of banking?

Banking and financial services industry is undergoing a massive transformation all over the world. While until the early 2010, FinTech wasn’t even on the radar of banking institutions let alone the entrepreneurial kinds, suddenly there is an upsurge in activity in the FinTech community.

Global FinTech financing has grown from less than $930 million for the whole of 2008 to over $1.04 billion in the month of October 2014 alone.

Customer experience is driving and bringing forth disruptive technologies and innovation in the form of mobile wallets, branchless banking et all and FinTech  startups offering a plethora of banking solutions – from payments, money transfer to apps and peer-to-peer lending.

I’ve been following the FinTech industry for a while now and can see spurt of activities in different parts of the world and different sections of the communities coming together to give it its due importance.

We can see growing signs of action in Australia with a strong FinTech startup ecosystem taking shape seeking to disrupt the traditional banking industry. Similarly, London is becoming quite a hub of all things disruptive in the financial services industry globally with branchless banking and an ever increasing focus on providing banking services to the unbanked. KPMG in collaboration with AWI and the Financial Services Council has released a report detailing 50 of the world’s strongest FinTech innovators.

Though traditional banks are now making conscious efforts to revamp their outdated systems and introduce new offerings to lure Millennials, they are, however, still competing with other global banks and financial institutions.

According to a recent post by Scott Walcheck, “Financial services are becoming à la carte. People, particularly millennials, are moving away from single monolithic banking institutions serving the majority of their financial needs to hand picking the specialized services that work for them.” Banks and financial institutions are yet to cover ground to compete with the likes of new entrants in the financial services arena.

It is already evident that FinTech is disrupting the traditional banking models. An interesting development on the sidelines of FinTech in the financial industry is the entry of new players in the banking industry. Tech giants Apple, Facebook and Google too have jumped onto the financial bandwagon and showing keen interest to provide financial services to their customer base. These players are using their platforms and scale of their existing user base to provide gamut of services – fee free payments, peer-to-peer payments etc.

We are living in a time where Gen Y or ‘Millennials’ have virtually grown up connected and accustomed to open and social lives. The future potential customers of financial services will be driven by these expectations. Tech giants such as Facebook and Apple would enjoy an upper hand compared to FinTech or traditional banking institutions in gaining the trust of these customers as they have spent time and money building brand equity and understanding their customers’ psychology. According to a recent study by Gemalto, “One in four millennials has effectively abandoned branches altogether.”

There is an interesting report by the UK Government Office for Science on FinTech  Futures: The UK as a world leader in Financial Technologies which outlines measures such as setting up of a “FinTech  Advisory Group” with representation from the government, regulators, trade associations amongst others for developing UK as a global hub for FinTech innovation community.”

While the debate over FinTech vs Tech taking over the financial world is HOT, it is measures such as the ones being adopted by the UK government that will lead the way forward. Definitive measures on a global scale will act as critical success factors for the FinTech-Tech players to flourish and launch innovative financial offerings to compete with the mainstream banks and financial institutions. We need equal amounts of innovation and disruption with government support, monitoring and intervention to regulate the industry globally.

These are certainly exciting times for FinTech startups and Tech giants around the world as they are suddenly in the limelight and a foreboding time for traditional banking & financial institutions since this will shape up the future of the industry.

What do you think is the biggest threat to banks at the moment – FinTech or Tech? Which should the banks focus on to start with. Please share your thoughts. I’d love to hear from you in the comments below.

Disclaimer: The views expressed here are personal and are not reflective of the organization the author works for.

Guest Post by Ina Bansal, Nucleus Software

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SEBI Startup Listing Exchange – Nasdaq of the East

Efforts of iSPIRT’s List-in-India Policy Expert Team have reaped the desired results. The securities market regulator, SEBI, has announced relaxed norms for a separate platform to allow “new-age companies” having an innovative business model and belonging to the knowledge-based technology sector to list in the country.

The existing legal framework has considerable challenges for a successful listing, including the mandatory track record of distribution of profits for 3 years. Consequently, Indian technology startups (with their usually disruptive business models) have been increasingly looking to list overseas in view of the less stringent regulatory hurdles. It is hoped that the relaxed regulatory regime will provide software product companies with an opportunity to raise capital through listing onthe proposed platform, and give them a viable alternative to offshore listings. The new platform is also expected to provide an exit opportunity to the investors who have invested in such startups, thereby generating further cycle of investment in the economy.

The iSPIRT List-in-India Policy Expert Team is very happy with this outcome. Things have moved really quickly after we kicked off the effort on Dec 19th in Blr. Mohandas Pai has been an excellent mentor and driver of this effort. We are now working hard to address issues that drive exodus at the Seed and Series A stages of software product startups.
More details of the SEBI Policy can be taken from here. Some of the coverage we have got from LiveMint, Business Standard and Economic Times are here.

 Guest Post by Sanjay Khan, Khaitan & Co

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How SignEasy got featured in an Apple campaign (and almost screwed it up!)

SignEasy was a two person operation in 2010, the year we launched. And bootstrapping meant a lot of pressure first on gaining and then on maintaining traction; there was, and still is, no safety jacket. If we have no money to pay salaries and run operations, there is no company or product, period. But we have been lucky, and successful enough to be profitable.

Today we have grown into a 15 member team, and SignEasy is now among the most successful apps on iOS and Android.

As more and more paperwork moves to the cloud, we are extremely well placed to help individuals and SMBs use eSignatures, and in turn, save paper and a lot of time and money in the process.

What we think about a lot

Innovation and customer happiness, that’s our mantra. An app like SignEasy is passing through a quality check every time a customer uses it. Which means any and all feedback is in real time, giving us the data we need to keep innovating and to keep the customer happy.

Our almost continuous updates and fixes to leverage Apple’s iOS strengths (such as our iOS extension and Touch-ID support), and to bring more capabilities to customers is due to this ruthless focus on user experience.

The mail from Apple

These priorities are what I believe got us noticed by Apple.

Early April this year, something popped up in my inbox. It was a mail from Apple’s marketing agency about featuring SignEasy on their upcoming iPad summer campaign. Needless to say, we were overjoyed. Though branding with an Apple ad was one reason for our excitement, there was a significant business angle as well — iOS accounts for 85% of our paying users, and Apple’s early adopters, the people who appreciate a well designed product, had always been our own champions. Apple wanted secrecy, they specified that no major changes should be introduced to the UI and product screens throughout the campaign, which would have made the ad rendering dated.

We agreed, and complied within a 48 hour window. We couldn’t control our excitement. After all, this was the ecosystem we had been nurturing for some time. This recognition was the ultimate feather in our cap. It was all about that important word we kept hearing about in startup conferences and funding events all around the world — validation. Then we went back to our work mode with fingers crossed, looking forward to hear back from them in the near future.

Until it all went wrong.

It was the 4th of May. A routine update for iOS went wrong and our users were unable to sign documents. We were devastated. We apologized to our customers immediately, and by May 6, had expedited a fix that went live that very night, restoring full service back to our users. It had taken a day and a night of non-stop work, but we had fixed the issue, and we heaved a sigh of relief.

SignEasy1

Several users were happy with the way we handled this

1-mbRylRTFH7QTzref6TIGKg

Little did our users know that we were running against time, as May 7 was the day the iPad campaign went live. A lot of interest would be heading in our direction and needless to say, it wouldn’t have been very impressive if the app had been down on that very day.

Behind the scenes

The point I want to make here is that this experience again underlined to us the uniqueness of the lean, nimble startup model that we follow, despite being a five year old bootstrapped company. Our users have never had a reason not to trust us, and neither did Apple. As partners and owners of the ecosystem we are part of, it was imperative not to disappoint them, and we are proud we did not. The work that we put in to get the app working for our users again, the small colors and buttons we test and change to enhance usability, the late night frustrations with pizza delivery — these are things our users will never see, and that is by design.

It makes us proud that all this behind the scenes work reflects on the little screen in our users’ hands, and that they enjoy it enough to say that they love it.

Head over to this Youtube video where SignEasy’s ease of eSignature is being showcased by Apple

and other apps listed in the small business section by Apple:www.apple.com/ipad/change-everything/.

1-PIQFLWGxQ3VOu82GyIdFkQPart 2 of this post will talk about the actual gains that we had by being part of the Apple campaign. There are going to be metrics, and a lot of takeaways for app store citizens like us. So stay tuned!

Guest Post by Sunil Patro, Founder & CEO, SignEasy

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Leveraging an open IoT platform to accelerate innovation

Every decade or so, a technology shift occurs that has an impact far beyond its original design. These groundbreaking technologies can affect industries and applications that were never conceived of by their founders. The mobile phone is an example, which morphed into the smartphone and created a massive mobile development and application industry.

IoT represents such a sea change, not only in technology, but in how we work, play, and live. IoT isn’t just a tool for technologists or businesses – it has become a part of everyday life.

IoT is more than a single technology, or even a single philosophy. Today, there are thousands of potential uses, and it is being incorporated into products from manufacturers across all segments. Thousands of developers are creating connected products, introducing an entirely new category of technology, not just an application.

As such, the biggest hurdle to IoT innovation is not the hardware development. It is a relatively easy task to embed sensors and microprocessors into virtually anything. The challenge is to create a single application to control everything, with an architecture that provides whatever the developer needs, from the infrastructure to an open development platform that allows IoT connectivity across millions of devices.

An IoT platform ought to connect more than a single IoT device, or a group of devices from a single manufacturer. It should connect an entire ecosystem of devices. A home may have dozens of devices from multiple manufacturers, so a truly IoT-enabled smart home must be created with a multi-vendor perspective in mind. More importantly, IoT requires an open platform to host and manage devices.

The present state of IoT includes multiple standards, and connecting them is often problematic. To facilitate development in this environment and connect devices from multiple vendors, it is necessary to have a unified platform to support different protocols and standards and unify all data into a single interface.

Recently, iYogi launched the Digital Service Cloud Open IoT Platform, the first enterprise grade IoT platform from India. Built on Microsoft Azure, the platform is proven to scale to millions of devices. Innovators can use the platform to deploy, monitor and automatically manage their products across millions of end users, easily integrate their products with the growing IoT ecosystem, and use its advanced analytics capabilities to build and fast track their global growth strategies.

Digital Service Cloud overcomes the barriers to commercial success for IoT developers, and is especially aimed at IoT startups and innovators who have created innovative IoT solutions, but require a technology platform, a scalable infrastructure and a comprehensive application stack.

Digital Service Cloud is a platform-as-a-service with an open platform, free to use, that developers can tap into. It includes an infrastructure-as-a-service component and an open development platform for IoT applications. The infrastructure is highly scalable, and can be used by developers to connect their devices, monitor, and manage them.

Once a pre-programmed ‘chip’ is embedded into a product and an API installed, users can stream real-time data to monitor usability, performance and consumer behavior of data events in various formats. A dashboard allows companies to view events by device and also upload “offline” third party data to map this against device data for deeper insights and intelligence. Users can configure a rule engine to define operational and business processes from simple to complex rules.

Each time an event is received, an automatic trigger is actioned, initiating a response from designated respondents, and this may include: the manufacturer, a sales vendor or even a customer service representative.

The Digital Service Cloud IoT platform enables complex business information and reports to be created, correlating data received from diverse events – across the entire customer based using an offline product and device that was uploaded. The platform makes sense of big and small data with visualization capabilities and tools to derive predictive and trend analysis.

Thus, Digital Service Platform is the back end that enables developers to launch viable commercial IoT businesses and is essential to drive innovation.

Guest Post by Inder Mohan Singh, VP at iYogi.

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What’s the one tool all successful brands need? Are your listening?

A brand is representative of the source from where a product or service comes from. Over the years consumers have learned to associate a word, combination of words, tagline, logo and colors with their respective brands. A brand signifies a set of attributes. Leading brands spend a fortune to re-inforce these attributes, which are tweaked time and again to seek resonance with the ethos of their audience.

“Good advertising does not just circulate information. It penetrates the public mind with desires and belief” Leo Burnett

What’s the one tool all successfulAdvertisers are predicted to spend close to $600 billion worldwide in 2015. By 2018 they are expected to spend $194.5 billion on internet advertising. They will be spending all those billions of dollars to educate, stand-out and resonate.

With the dawn of social media, brands have been laid bare to uncomfortable and tricky situations. Over the last few years brands from sectors which were previously considered to be shy about opening up, have jumped on the social media bandwagon. Think of traditionally tight-lipped brands from telecommunications, banking, financial services, insurance, travel and hospitality. The constant onslaught of queries, opinions, criticisms & rumors have compelled them to be active on social media.

The information age that we live in is irrevocably dominated by social networks and smart devices. Brands are no exception to this change in status quo. Brands who are new to being ‘open’ have found themselves in unchartered territory. Whereas those who have turned social savvy are now reaping the benefits through engagement-driven content.

For most leading brands, it’s counterintuitive to ignore negativity directed towards them. The ubiquity of smartphones, high-speed networks and a variety of social networks means that: consumers are better informed and aware than ever. Social word-of-mouth is the order of the day, it is steadily changing advertising as we know it. Brands need to be particularly cautious of their social word-of-mouth. Is it good? Is it bad? Even the most well-established brands can find themselves in hot waters if they don’t pay heed to it.

Brands cannot feign ignorance in the face of a socially mature audience. For the lack of timely response, this audience is inclined to assume that you’ve heard them but continue to ignore. There is no bliss in such ignorance laden instances for brands. And as far as the audience is concerned, there is clearly no incentive for them to be loyal. Negative reviews, posts on complaint forums, funny memes are some of the ways they vent out their frustration. Anything that sounds even remotely scandalous can end up becoming viral fodder.

Social media has led consumers to expect more transparency from brands. It’s not just social media networks like Facebook & Twitter, but review sites, complaint forums, news sites and personal blogs that complete their social experience. A popular brand can find itself mentioned on any of these feedback avenues. It’s therefore important for brands to keep their ears to the ground.

To be successful across the digital landscape brands are required to listen and analyze not only their own conversations, but also the competition. Engaging, responding and disseminating content are other important activities for brands to conduct. Listening is the most important activity for which a variety of tools are available.

Through social listening, brands can not only soften the blows from social criticism but also turn things around. Listening is a great way of gathering business intelligence. It can be argued that traditional market research is slowly but steadily being replaced by social listening. Brands can uncover the most frequently raised issues and brand perception. It’s also possible for them to gauge the impact of their social media campaigns. Since brand conversations tend to be public, brands can track everything that is being said about their competitors too. If done correctly, there are a lot of actionable insights that can be gained through social listening.

Guest Post by Sundeep Dawale, Marketing Communications Head at KonnectSocial.com

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Building Marketing & Sales Engine for Your Global B2B SaaS Product

Recently, India has seen many success stories of product startups in the SaaS category, which are building products for the global market. Here is what we did –

Suresh Sambandam, Founder and CEO of OrangeScape (the company behind KissFlow), in collaboration with the iSPIRT team, conducted the 49th #PlayBookRT on building SaaS products for the world. Sokrati (Pune) played a gracious host for this event, and saw around 14 product entrepreneurs from different cities.


Avinash Raghava introduced Suresh and the RT was kicked off with a round of introduction from all the participants.

Suresh laid out the purpose of the round table and defined the scope. This PlayBookRT was for the B2B SaaS startups with a product that has a global audience. These companies have achieved a product-market fit with a MRR (Monthly Recurring Revenue) in the range of $1K to $5K. These companies are looking to move the needle to $50K-$100K MRR. Essentially, early startups that are looking to grow at least 110x.

B2B customers need to be segmented with certain metrics. For KissFlow, the number of employees was a key metric to identify customer segments. The segments were –

  • SOHO (<10 employees),
  • Very Small Business (10-50),
  • SMB (50-500),
  • Mid-Market (500-5000) and
  • Enterprises (5000+)

Depending on your product, you may segment the customers by their revenues.

It is unlikely that your product will work across all segments as it is. The sweet spot for KissFlow is the SMB and Mid Market, as the value proposition is stronger for these customers. You have to pick your own sweet spot.

There was some discussion on why Enterprise segment is different from the others. There were multiple views on that. It was discussed that the marketing and sales processes are different for large customers. Their buying process is different too. They want “vendors” to come to them. Often, the product itself doesn’t work. Example – for KissFlow, Enterprise’s would need integration with their existing systems like SAP or Oracle. The SMB or Mid-Market customers do not have such requirements. For enterprises, you may have to package your product as a custom solution. Instead of the entire company, you may find it easier to get your product rolled out in a specific department.

The Mid-Market segment opens a big opportunity in US market. Typically, in the US, $5,000 is the approval limit in this segment. Most of the SaaS products fit in this limit. That makes decision making easier and fast. These companies are willing to spend money on products that help them compete with big guys.

2015-05-30 13.54.47

The discussion then moved on to the core elements of a successful SaaS business.

The role of the product in SaaS is very high. For enterprise products, the product comes at the end of the sales cycle. For SaaS products, the opposite is true. So, your product has to solve a problem.

While product is at the core of your business, marketing comes before the product. Your marketing communication needs to match the product promise.

Before accelerating your marketing, you need to decide on the product positioning. Your product is either a category creator, or provides a novel approach to an existing and well-understood category, or low cost alternative. Often, most of the SaaS businesses will fall in the second or third category. It’s also possible that product positioning could be mix of last two categories. The category creator products are hardest to pull off. The low-cost alternative need not be a low-priced alternative. Being in India, we can enjoy the advantage of low cost structures. Some companies do pass on the cost benefits to the customer via low price. While offering a low price option, it is important to ensure that you are not perceived as a low-quality option.

The next topic of discussion was offering a Freemium product vs Free trial. Often, for SaaS, this choice does not depend on the cost. The general consensus seemed to emerge that a free trial is the best option. Even if it doesn’t cost you much to offer part of the product for free, the effort to convert that free user to being a ‘paid’ user is high. Plus, when the user is ready to pay for the product, the user still may go out to look for other options. There are “free” products that make you pay with say a link to their website. This is not really free as your customers are paying with a different currency.

Like all discussions, this one too took a detour and we discussed about sales for the global customer base. To serve the US market, you need to have a night shift. For KissFlow, the newly signed up customer receives two emails – one automated and one personal email. The automated email is to schedule a demo of the product. KISSFlow has reduced the friction to sign up dramatically. You sign up with just an email. They have a team to find out information about that person based on the email address. All the new leads get assigned to the sales team automatically based on timezones and available bandwidth with the sales team. Each sales person handles about 200 leads per month with an annual contract value of less than $5,000.

2015-05-30 12.41.21

The next topic of discuss was pricing. People visit the homepage and then the ‘pricing’ page. They are qualifying themselves by looking at pricing. There are various ways to price your product. For the well-established category, competition will be a huge influencer in your pricing. You can also price your product based on value offered, though, you need to clearly demonstrate the value of the product. For KissFlow, the anchor was Google Apps. At the start, they focused on a niche of companies who have adopted Google Apps, which costs $5 per user per month. So, they picked the price of $3 per month.

For SaaS companies, raising the prices is usually not a problem. You can grandfather your existing customers who will continue to enjoy the same price, but the newer customers will pay a higher price. The real problem is lowering the prices, as it upsets existing customers. If your customers are not complaining about the prices, you are leaving money on the table and you should raise the price.

You should make users pay every month irrespective of their usage. You shouldn’t have to sell your product every month to the customers. That’s why your customers need to keep paying every month. Setting the expectations also ensures that customers are not thinking about pricing often.

Marketing was the next topic of discussion. Your website is a core marketing asset. You should avoid outsourcing the site development and have an in-house team for updating and maintaining the website.

Your home page should have a crisp headline with some value proposition. Jargon should be avoided. Make it easy for customers to understand and take a decision about your product. You should create a “customers” page for social proof. Highlight your major customers on this page. If you are running a blog, it will have visitors who are not aware about your product. You should create ads for your own product and run them on your blog.

You can use SEO and AdWords to bring the organic and paid traffic. SEO needs a lot of time to ramp up. So, start early with a dedicated team, even if it is a one-person team. AdWords needs a specialist to handle the paid traffic. Here, you can define your key metrics like costs per sign up. AdWords can deliver a sign up at $10-$25 for search and $2-$10 for display ads. These are only sign ups and not conversions. You need to measure conversion to paid subscription. That would be your true cost of customer acquisition.

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You need to have a responsive site as mobile traffic is growing. Even though most business users will sign up for your product with a desktop, they might discover your product on the mobile (maybe while reading a blog). They need to have a good experience when they are on mobile.

You can run re-marketing ads. This will provide you multiple opportunities to reach out to the user. Test out different messaging in the re-targeting. You can do smarter remarketing by finding the users’ point of interaction. For paid ads, start with only the US and then keep adding more countries depending on the quality of the traffic. There was a brief discussion on content marketing, focused on the disciplined approach to creating valuable content that will start delivering results over a period of time.

This was an excellent round table that covered most of the aspects of building SaaS products for the global market.

Contributed by Shashikant Kore, Co-founder of Karooya.

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CISO Platform Decision Summit to Showcase Innovative IT Security Start-ups

India’s startup ecosystem has climbed another step towards becoming the largest in the world. It is the fastest growing and third-largest in the world. Though we have more than 3000 start-ups in India, we are way behind in terms of IT Security start-ups. With the growing concerns of Cyber warfare, India as a country needs to have significant indigenous capabilities in the field of cyber security. With the vision to promote the IT Security start up ecosystem in India, CISO Platform has launched an initiative to promote Indian product companies during its flagship event: Decision Summit and Top 100 CISO Awards. iSprit has joined hands to support this initiative as a community partner.

In order to encourage entrepreneurs who have come up with innovative ideas in the field of information security, CISO Platform is providing an opportunity to showcase their ideas at Decision Summit 2015, New Delhi. This event shall serve as a platform to connect with the top IT security decision makers and numerous innovative Information Security companies. The selected companies shall be able to present their innovation during the event apart from having space in the expo floor.

The event shall host 100 to 150 Indian Chief Information Security Officers or Head of IT Security. The platform can be utilized by the selected start-ups to network and learn from the top CISOs and also introduce their innovation to them. The event shall also have numerous sessions and workshops in the emerging field of IT Security like Cloud Security, Cloud Access Security Brokers, Threat Intelligence, RASP, IAST and lot more.

To know more about Innovative Start-up Showcase: Click here

To know more about Decision Summit: Click here

Guest Post by Bikash Barai, Co-Founder, iViz Security.

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Leadership Attitude

In this cutthroat and competitive business environment it has become imperative for both new and established organizations to be on top of their game. Staying constantly in top form and delivering results requires the organization to have people in the management with strong leadership skills. These people are even more important for companies that are yet to make their mark in the market.

As part of our initiative to support the growth of start-ups and encourage them in their endeavours, we had recently conducted a roundtable on Leadership Attitude – to understand and discuss what makes a good leader – one that people would willingly follow?

In response, our team came up with the following attitudes of a leader – that all those aspiring to lead must imbibe and also pass on to their teams to ensure that their venture is successful.

Know your worth – All successful people have a healthy self esteem and know what they are worth. They neither take nor behave in an unacceptable manner with anyone. Amongst all, this quality that gives rise to self belief and confidence in one’s ability is the most important one.

A to-do list – To make sure that their day is productive, leaders plan to do the most important work in the first two hours of the day i.e. they apply the Pareto principle – which suggests that one must give importance to the 20% of the tasks that generate 80% of the results.

Clear work schedule and follow up – Leaders have a well prepared work schedule for all the tasks that they want to achieve, they set clear deadlines for these tasks and regularly follow up on it – approximately in four to six weeks.

Compulsory savings – Savings come in handy during those rainy days or ‘periods of recession’ and are important both for individuals and organizations. Successful people ensure that they compulsorily save at least 10% of their income every month.

Develop intuition – Successful leaders not only use the data and information available to them but also their intuition – gut feeling, to make decisions. According to the book blink – by Malcolm Gladwell, which is about rapid cognition – the rate of success for decisions taken based on gut feeling or intuition is 60% and 40% for those decisions that are arrived at by following a logical thought process.

Clear definition of success – Success is a very relative term. What one person considers as successful may only be a small achievement or goal for another. Leaders have a clear understanding of what success means to them.

Cultivate kindness – It is important that in a hurry to win this never ending race of achievements we do not overlook the importance of or forget basic human qualities. All successful people have a strong sense of empathy and they consciously practice kindness of word and of deed. Along with this these people are trust worthy, act with integrity, are approachable and most importantly they are likeable.

Take risks – Success is part dependent on our ability to take risks and work out of our comfort zones. Opportunities often come disguised as risks, threats or challenges, which if evaded have the capacity to become regrets. So, to avoid falling into the trap of ‘what if’ thinking and holding regrets– cultivate a habit of at least taking some calculated risks.

Practice meditation – All successful people practice the art of meditation. This technique helps them keep calm and think clearly when faced with adverse or challenging situations.

Learn to apply the correct response to stress inducing situations – There are four major reactions that occur in instances of perceived harm or attack – fight, flight, freeze, or fawn. A successful person knows how to judge a situation and react according to it. For e.g. if it can be fought – then stay and fight. If the situation is more powerful than you – then retreating or flight response does not make you any weaker.

Know your personality type and that of your core team – For an organization to be successful, it is important that the core team is made up of people with different core strengths that complement each other. Leaders have the basic knowledge of personality types and also the weakness and strength of each type. This knowledge helps them build a strong and competitive team with a multitude of skills. They have also perfected or nearly perfected the person-job fit in their organizations.

Ability to take tough decisions – This is one quality on which a lot of success is dependent on. Leaders should be able to set aside their emotions and take decisions for the larger good of their people and company.

Above par people skills – Leaders now that a lot of their success depends on how they communicate with the people who work for them. They use respect and tact in all their communication so as to ensure that no one goes away feeling hurt or humiliated. The best leaders work on building relationships with the people who work for them by ensuring that they now their names, a bit about their families and for the immediate team – their goals and aspirations. These small pieces of information go a long way in building a strong and motivated team.

The God complex – Leaders know that they are not shielded from failure. They do not let their successes to get to their heads and develop a false sense of self or haughtiness.

They do not take rejection personally – Leaders know the rules of the game; they do not take rejection from investors, market or the public personally. Instead they work harder and smarter to acquire the required support.

Networking – Leaders are expert networkers – they spend adequate time on meeting and cultivating relationships with people whom they would want to work with or those whom they would like to do business with in the future.

They believe in Karma – What you sow is what you reap and what goes around comes around – are the two mantras that leaders live by.

This list is just the tip of the iceberg called Leadership, but it’ll help you to get a head start on building the awesome team most organizations would wage a war for. Start with these and build your own definitions and mantras to aid your journey in building a successful and enduring venture. We’re always there to support 🙂

Guest Post Contributed by Praveen Singh, 99Tests

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China and India: Rivals and friends?

The tone set by the Prime Minister’s visit suggests that the two countries can be both, with India being an equal partner

Narendra Modi found himself marking a year as Prime Minister neither in his home state of Gujarat nor in New Delhi, but in the bustling metropolis of Shanghai.

The final engagement of his three-day visit to China (May 14-16) was a speech to the expatriate Indian community. I was there and I doubt I shall forget the spectacle. Nor could one argue with his refrain: vaqt badal raha hai (the times are changing).

modi-l5Becoming visible

When I first arrived in China from the UK in 2011, I was struck by how few Indians could be seen there. This impression was compounded by discovering how limited the flight options between China and India were, in great contrast to the daily (often multiple) flights between China and the UK and other more distant destinations. Although business school academics in Shanghai brought together leading practitioners, diplomats and experts to reflect on Sino-Indian business activity, it seemed that neither nation saw the other as much of a priority.

But a lot can (and does) happen in four years. The Modi show in Shanghai certainly suggests progress has been made since I first set foot in China: in the emergence of a new style of foreign relations in India, in the willingness of China and India to engage with each other, in the ability of the Indian community in China to cohere.

As I reflect on this event I am encouraged and cautious in equal measure about China-India relations in general and Sino-Indian business activity in particular, for three reasons.

Prior experience to go with the charisma. My biggest source of encouragement stems from the fact that although this was Modi’s first visit as Prime Minister, it was far from being his first experience of China. Indeed, the one bright spot in my early dismal assessment of China-India dealings was Modi’s visit as Gujarat chief minister in November 2011 — and that had been his fourth such visit.

I teach international strategy in a business school, and I emphasise to my students the importance of prior experience in helping entrepreneurs and managers succeed in foreign markets knowledgably. Modi’s China experience of the past augurs well for what India can achieve in China, and may well make a big difference to whether his visit ends up yielding incremental advances in business opportunities for Indian businesses in China and vice versa — or representing a genuine inflexion point that heralds the next substantial wave of Indo-Chinese commercial activity.

Honest self-reflection

Honesty about problems helps, but doesn’t fix them. My biggest source of caution arises from the fact that the honest acknowledgement of problems is a necessary but insufficient condition for solving them. Modi has been justifiably commended in the Indian press for being frank about the need for tackling vexing issues such as border disputes, and his Chinese counterpart has reciprocated the candour. This helps, but the proof of the pudding will become apparent only as the interfaces established on this visit are utilised for continued dialogue.

Business veterans in China, including some from India, often comment on the need for commitment, patience and persistence in cracking the Chinese market. Surely, this holds for Sino-Indian diplomacy as well.

The Indian community in China exists! Whatever the actual outcomes of Modi’s visit for Sino-Indian business, the event has already made history in bringing together far-flung expats of Indian origin in China on an unprecedented scale. The significance of this might not be easy to grasp for those living amongst numerous people of Indian origin in the US, UK, South Africa, West Asia and Down Under.

In China, however, the sight of Indian restaurants and other signs of a thriving Indian community is not commonplace outside of the large metropolises (or Yiwu, the city with the largest contingent from outside Shanghai at the event).

So to have nearly 5,000 people of Indian origin under one roof was truly remarkable. As a colleague commented: “I have always wondered where all those Indians travelling with me on Air India flights to China went, because I’ve never seen them afterwards. Now I know!”

Quo vadis?

Several years ago, when I was a newly minted lecturer at Glasgow University, I was invited to an Indian community reception in London for Prime Minister Manmohan Singh. My recollections of that event in London are of low-key dignity and a profound sense of history. Shanghai was high-octane celebration and a profound sense of anticipation.

So, where to from here? India has to be honest and understand that although China and India are spoken of in the same breath, in reality it is a distant second as an economy. The interest that Modi has generated in China, therefore, acquires even greater significance. To his credit he has come across in the media, both in China and India, as one who wouldn’t settle for anything but treatment as an equal. But it does not mask the fact that India and China are great rivals. That said, I would aver that the debate as to whether China and India are (or should be) friends or rivals represents a false dichotomy.

Rivalry between the two most populous nations in the world, widely regarded as the two largest economies of the future, is virtually inevitable. But what is not inevitable is whether this rivalry is friendly or bitter.

An important understanding I have acquired is that often the Chinese deal with dilemmas differently from their western counterparts — they tend to opt for ‘both…and’ rather than ‘either…or’. This may be a good way to go because neither nation can afford not to be rivals — or to destroy friendship over their rivalries. What China and India should work out is how to be rivals and friends at the same time.

Blog Post  by Dr. Shameen Prashantham, Associate Professor in international business and strategy at Nottingham University Business School, China

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Embarking on a journey called Digital Desh Drive

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Since 2012, NowFloats has been helping small businesses all over the country get discovered and grow online. This year, we are embarking on a journey called Digital Desh Drive as a part of our mission to get every local business online by 2020. Digital Desh Drive is all set to kick start in Amritsar on the 6th of May, cover 20-25 important cities across the sub-continent and end in Kanyakumari on the 27th of May 2015.

The drive aims to study the behavioral patterns of entrepreneurs across different regions and also help them build a strong digital footprint online. Led by startup enthusiast, Prathibha Sastry, the four member crew will interview these small business owners with a mindset to gather insights and stories about their setups and also help them to connect digitally on a larger platform with their end consumers.

Follow NowFloats on Twitter to know when we are coming to your city, and come say Hi. Use the hashtag #DigitalDesh to follow all the action from the tour.

Got questions you would like us to ask these small business owners? Tweet to us at @prathibhasastry and @swapnakucherla.

Guest Post by Swapna Kucherlapati, NowFloats

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Everything you need to know to build and scale a SaaS business

While new-age global SaaS startups like Zenefits & Slack continue to grow at a feverish pace, India too is beginning to see the emergence of quality SaaS companies like Practo, Freshdesk and Capillary among others. These companies have attractive unit economics, are capital efficient and have demonstrated the ability to compete in international markets. As a result there is strong investor interest in India SaaS companies.

Matrix Partners India, one of the leading venture capital firms in India, has invested in startups such as Practo, Limetray, GrownOut to name a few, which are building scalable businesses with a SaaS delivery model.

Matrix Partners India, is hosting a meetup on May 7th, 2015 in Bengaluru with the theme of ‘Everything SaaS.’

Davik Skok, General Partner, Matrix Partners, has a wealth of experience running companies. David will share his insights & experience of helping build & scale SaaS businesses. The talk will be followed by a panel discussion on the same theme. Panelists include David Skok, General Partner, Matrix Partners; Shashank ND, co-founder & CEO, Practo, Suresh Sambandam, CEO, KissFlow and Vijay Sharma, co-founder, Belong.

If you are a current or aspiring SaaS entrepreneur interested in attending this event, please register here.

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InTech50: an outside-in perspective

After a gap of 10 years, I recently returned to Bangalore to attend InTech50. The excitement started from the get go when I was flown from Delhi to Bangalore by an all-female Indigo cockpit – itself a reflection of our fast changing times.

Variration Banner 1.0-01The age of tech startups in India has dawned. With 3500+ registered startups & counting, India is well poised to become the second largest startup hub in the world (after the US) by the end of this decade. The quality of product design & engineering has also increased since entrepreneurship has become a career of choice. Top notch talent including IIT engineers and IIM MBAs are no longer flocking to high paying corporate jobs. A significant number are taking the leap to build new technology products. At the same time a broader ecosystem of venture capitalists and corporate partners have emerged, supported by institutions like NASSCOM and iSPIRT – which have tirelessly worked to galvanize stakeholders and unlock the value chain. None of this “software product industry architecture” visibly existed when I last left India 8 years ago!

InTech50 was a great example of how far we’ve come. 50 exciting B2B startups were showcased across key enterprise spaces – big data analytics, security & infrastructure, enterprise mobility & collaboration, compliance & HR management, and industry specific solutions in finance, manufacturing, retail and health. Across the board, the teams were impressive, in that the founders reflected original thinking & IP, and made their pitches with both passion and data. A few were established companies like Qubole, FreshDesk and Druva; others were earlier in their journeys. Some of my favorites were: Reverie, a “language gateway” that helps businesses localize their products across linguistic contexts; Vymo a simplified Saleforce-like tool for mobile foot force effectiveness; Clary5, a cross-product and cross-channel enterprise fraud management platform targeting financial institutions; low overhead & easy-to-use enterprise content & collaboration tools like Tydy and FrameBench; and hyperlocal retail analytics software like Nifty Window and NowFloats that bring online-grade data capabilities to offline retailers

InTech50-FinalistsThe event saw active participation from industry CIOs – both global and domestic – who provided rich and relevant perspectives to startups. We heard from the media, hardware & software technology, telecom, general & speciality insurance, and banking sectors. The program sparked rich interactions that highlighted core industry needs & product gaps, provided feedback to early stage concepts, and introduced prospective customers and operational partners to startups much in need of them.

Two interesting models of deeper corporate engagement with startups were explored. First, the role of corporates as enterprise startup customers. Here, given reputational risks involved, CIOs are more likely to test new products internally or with non-core services before extending them to customer facing or core operations. Not surprisingly, data security was highlighted as a dominant theme as many corporates – particularly the financial sector – continue to face fraud and data leakage risks. In addition, mobility, cloud-based digitization, large data analytics, & cognitive intelligence were areas championed by the industry representatives. Second, with traditional services companies, including Telcos and ITeS, moving away from time based billing models and rolling out hybrid product-service offerings, they are looking for startups as partners who may help them plug key portfolio gaps. This requires considerable thought around a joint go-to-market strategy leveraging both parties’ expertise to drive customer acquisition.

A third interesting perspective was offered by the son how certain software apps – notably Slack with its transparent, multi-channel collaboration functionality – when adopted in a corporate setting had potential to become a powerful cultural transformation catalyst. Slack has changed my world as well – exposing the massive inefficiencies of email as a collaboration tool – so I can completely relate.

With India as a major R&D hub (as well as a destination market) for US tech companies, the right skills and context will continue to infuse into the ecosystem and power India’s potential as a product nation. iSPIRT’s goal with InTech50 is to drive M&As from the current rate of one-per-quarter to one-per-month by the end of the year. The ecosystem is ripe for this. New & creative corporate relationships are needed to build trust and awareness. This is a must for corporates to stay relevant and innovative, whereas access to corporate customers, expertise and funding can help accelerate startups. This will in turn require numerous actors to join forces and build collaboration platforms that further strengthen the digital product ecosystem.

Guest post by Badal Malick – Co-founder of Nirvana Labs, a digital platform to drive global startup-corporate partnerships