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“Vertical SaaS” Deep Dive #PlaybookRT in Bangalore

If I were a Cobbler it would be my pride..

The best of all Cobblers to be..
If I were a Tinker, no Tinker beside
Should mend an old kettle like me..


The above poem defines vertical SaaS to a T!

When I got an invite from iSPIRT that there was going to be a roundtable on Vertical SaaS, I jumped from my chair with joy!

First of all I discovered only recently via iSPIRT that there’s a buzzing ecosystem of SaaS startups in India! Not SaaS enabled Marketplaces, but SaaS products that are built worldclass and sell to the world.

So when I discovered that within that little ecosystem, we can go further narrow into sharing knowledge specific to vertical SaaS, I could have given iSPIRT a bear hug!

So last Saturday, in the cosy n energetic office of Hotelogix, few of us vertical SaaS folks gathered around Sudheer Koneru – cofounder of Zenoti.

As with the iSPIRT roundtables this one was also a treasure-trove of experiences shared, founder dilemmas discussed, the unavoidable pain points bantered about.

WhatsApp Image 2017-03-05 at 12.36.07 PM

The 2 main takeaways from Sudheer’s session were

1) Narrow Focus

So when you are starting a business you want everyone to buy your product right? Especially if your product is an Online Software that needs least feet-on-street selling.
 
Now you have chosen a vertical as your karmabhoomi, at least in that vertical, you want everyone, right? In case of Sudheer who builds a kickass product that makes wellness service/spa owners’ life easy, one would expect him to want every Spa, Massage Parlor and Beauty Parlor to use his product. There are at least 5 Beauty Parlors in any 1KM radius of any metro/tier-1 city!
 
The answer is a resounding No. Sudheer chose to focus further narrow on that – upon Customers whose pain point is the most acute. Those are the multiple outlet chains. Now that Zenoti has an established market, it is exploring expanding the customer segment.
 
Apart from the customer segment Zenoti also sets an example in going narrow on geography. Sudheer started Zenoti from Seattle, worked on winning the Seattle market and then looking elsewhere.
 
Reminded me very much how we limited ADDA to Whitefield in Bangalore before spreading wide to rest of India.

2) Empathy

Sudheer highlighted how employees in a StartUp may miss out on the Empathy factor in our dealings with the Customer.
 
To the Cofounder of a Vertical SaaS product Empathy would come naturally. If you are a cobbler all you care about are the feet of customers. When your customer mentions a stitch was sticking out in the shoe, you grimace, you know how annoying it must be to the Customer. Not only you know how it feels you makes sure your Customer knows that you feel her pain. And then of course you fix it
 
But, how do you pass on that Empathy to your employees!
 
Interesting inputs flowed in from all present.
 
Overall, this roundtable set us few steps forward  on the path of overall Wellness and Growth!
 
Of course the final credits goes to Natwar who moderated the session like the pro he is!
 
Guest Post by San Banerjee, ApartmentAdda
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I am the Product Manager

Of the various hats I have worn all these years – Founder, Sales guy, Deployment Specialist, Level 1 and Level 2 Support, DevOps, Coder, Cheque depositor – I have come to realize I was a Product Manager all along – right from the get go.

Putting a label on what you do is extremely important. It helps you define the job you do, appreciate it, read more on it and helps you improve on that particular skill.

If you are the guy/girl in charge of making the Product among the Founding Team – you are the Product Manager. Say it out aloud – “I am the Product Manager”. The fate of your entire Startup lies in your decisions.

All other designations – CEO, CTO, Director, Co-Founder all are important – for the outside world and your team-mates – but nothing is as critical as the “Product Manager” hat you are wearing now.

Strap the Product Manager Hat tight.

When I gave Sales demo – I was not trying to get a Cheque out of the customer. I was listening to their pain points, and my mind was frantically scanning to see how my Startup could alleviate those paint points. I was trying to find patterns among Customers – so my solution can solve them all. I was trying to see how much value we can give them, and price our product as a fraction of the value ( and not just features ).

When I was paying the monthly bill for AWS account – and saw it was increasing gradually, asked myself – Are such resource hogging servers really necessary – and promptly turned them off – and found better cost effective alternatives. Also when I plan a feature, I keep the cost in mind – I am not going to get sold on the hype of a technology.

When I got a customer to go live – I realised how a few small features created some of the biggest headaches and heartburns. Promptly booted them off or tweaked them.

When I had to do Marketing – do SEO, or write content for Brochrures, or create Competitor analysis – I had to analyse inwardly as well as the competition and could identify the areas we were strong and weak. I knew what areas we could pull ahead of the competition – become more stronger, and what areas we had to improve – so we cannot be beaten down with.

If you are the Product Manager of a Startup – and working 9 to 5, doing a few customer interviews, talking to the CEO/CTO/Founder, browsing competitors website/Apps, STOP – you have to do more. [ ps : Startup founders, if you have hired Product Managers – here is what they have to start doing ]

1. Accompany the Sales guys in a few demos. In fact you should constantly do this – product keeps changing, market keeps changing, competiton keeps changing.

2. Get your hands dirty and deploy a few accounts – from start to finish.

3. Write the next set of marketing material, do the next Competitor Analysis document yourself – instead of just giving inputs.

4. Do SEO, plan the adwords campaign yourself.

5. Be the DevOps and/or pay the AWS bill from your pocket and get it reimbursed – and see for yourself that one cool feature which hardly anyone uses is costing a bomb.

And for Founders of Product Startups – Say it aloud. Print and Stick this in big fonts right in front of you.

“I am the Product Manager”

Guest Post by Venkat Kandaswamy, CoFounder, ApartmentAdda

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7 #SaaS Based Software for Managing Apartment & Housing Societies

The urban population is increasing by many folds every decade. Higher standards of living, greater exposure, fatter salary packages and attractive lifestyle is making youth migrate from villages to cities. In metro cities the ration of population to the land available can never be balanced. Leave aside sprawling mansions, in metro’s even owning a small flat is grim and a luxury that not all can afford. However, with the space crisis increasing by leaps and bounds, more and more sky scrapers and high rise buildings are coming up to accommodate the ever increasing population. In every housing society, there are volunteers who manage various sections like accounting, expense payment, calculating interest, etc. However, with the daily travel pangs and work pressure, it becomes increasingly tedious to manage the above said functions. This is where we come to your rescue with a list of seven SAAS (Software-as-a-service)  based apartment management and housing society softwares to make your life easier.

ApnaComplex

ApnaComplex, a SAAS software us built by Hyderabad based Gokul Singh. This ERP software is targeted for gated communities and housing societies.

This software manages four aspects:

  1. Accounting – It has two flavors, one for layman user and the other for auditors and accountants. The data can be entered by any person who knows basic computing and the back-end converts it into double entry accounting.
  2. Expense and income management – A record of all the members who have paid dues, not paid and how much money they owe all these details are stored in the software.
  3. Communication – Any changes in the current management system are sent to the members immediately by Email and SMS.
  4. Billing – This software performs three major tasks book-keeping, balance sheets and income-expense statement.

ApnaComplex offers the following striking features:

  1. All complex data of the residential society can be managed from one place
  2. Make all operations transparent and therefore prevent arguments among owners and residents
  3. All process are managed professionally by software and no dependence on any person
  4. Reduces the overall personal efforts

Many residential complexes have embraced ApnaComplex which comes at nominal monthly rates. It is advantageous for tenants, owners and the complex management team.

CommonFloor

CommonFloor App was built with an intention to bring all residents of a society together with the help of technology. The best highlight of this SAAS software is that you can be solely in charge of all the accounting and financing part and the entire system is transparent. Volunteers who take up housing responsibilities are very busy and CommonFloor is built keeping this in mind.

This software satisfies three goals:

  1. Brings the residents close in this age of technology where people are always on the go – Discussion forums to ensure that all residents are satisfied or have any issues with the management, notices that would land in your inbox every time a change is made, events and meet ups and directories to remain connected to fellow residents.
  2. Transparent accounting – Payment gateways, expense vs income tracker, seamless account management and audit ready account reports.
  3. Save time by great efficient management – Vendor management, complaints and issue management, SMS and Email broadcast and management of verification of new members.

India’s first real estate portal has more than 10 lakh residents using this software. Moreover, apart from the monthly or yearly payments, they do not charge any extra bucks as transaction fees.

ApartmentAdda

A great software can be available to the public at very reasonable cost of a few hundred rupees. ApartmentAdda has proved this statement right and is also able to generate profits. This online housing society accounting and management software has 1.8 lakh active users. The Target audience for this app are Co-operative Housing Societies, Resident Welfare associations and Apartment Owners Association. Its main aim is to boost communications among residents, facility management and accounting personals.

Why people find this app very user-friendly?

  1. They offer complete end-to-end accounting solutions and have a vigorous online ERP system for handling residential complexes.
  2. Important details like dues and actionable buttons are displayed at the top part of the page.
  3. News feed layout – Visit the news feed page and you’ll come to know about the latest developments in your society. All members can contribute and a like button is added so that you can shower him/her with your likes.
  4. Conversations section – Community conversations can be carried out in this section. Subgroups where you can have conversations with neighbors and share photos is a noteworthy widget.

ApartmentAdda offers the following advantages:

  1. Automatic maintenance billing
  2. User gets due reminder SMS’s
  3. In case of any problems you can always contact the Helpline
  4. It is possible to view and publish various reports

Go ahead and try ApartmentAdda, its cheap and has surplus advantages which would make your housing management easier. This Single Page Responsive UI is very simple to use, extremely user-centric and offered at the most reasonable rates.

SocietyRun

A one-stop destination for managing financial and accounting matters for housing societies, resident associations and gated communities. SocietyRun is a hassle-free and easy software for management and accounting of housing societies and apartments. This software facilitates enhanced communication between the members, sharing of pictures and documents, raising their voice on various issues, keeping a record of bills, dues and payment, decreasing paperwork and having transparency in all transactions.

Services offered by SocietyRun include:

  1. The society members can share their opinions, pictures and thoughts by polls.
  2. It allows members to buy and sell things.
  3. Check for dealers and service providers.
  4. Enhanced communication – Online communication via emails and offline by SMS and the sharing of announcements, documents and photographs is possible.
  5. There is a special activity point section wherein the members can recommend fellow members for their accomplishments.

The perks of using SoceityRun are:

  1. Social networking tools are available
  2. There is a special notice board where admin, committee member or office bearer can add notices
  3. All relevant information about members like their address, emergency contact, blood group and parking information are stored in the database
  4. Affordable
  5. Needs no external hardware or software

Apartment Sathi

Apartment Sathi is a multitasking software. Advancement of technology has given rise to software’s that perform a wide range of tasks for which previously manpower was needed. It is a SAAS catering to the overall needs of housing societies. This software manages the accounting and auditing essentials of landlords, industrial estates, builders and developers. It works on computers and mobile phones with an internet connection. Customers can opt for any package from Basic Product, Premium Product and Gold Type Product.

Advantages of using this software:

  1. Communication application: In order to boost communication between community members, there are activities like forums, residents address book, noticeboards, events calendar, website for your apartment, instant polls, vendor information, admin support and document storage.
  2. Management applications: Apartment Sathi makes managing your society easy as the software manages key tasks like admin users, creating a landing page for your apartment’s website, managing users, storing maintenance contracts, notices, staff records and admin files, event manager and issues, assets and complaint tracker.
  3. Accounting applications: In order to give you peace of mind, Apartment Sathi takes care of financial matters like payment gateway, income and expense tracker and managing cash flow.

A plethora of services offered by the SAAS Apartment Sathi makes it one of the most widely used in apartment management and housing society software.

Societyhive

This is the age of speed where everyone is always on-the-go. People living in flats do not even know who their neighbors are. Societyhive was built with the aim of bringing people closer and bridging communication gaps between them.

Societyhive makes a difference to your community by:

  1. Service providers: The main advantage of connected societies is that the local service providers know that all the members are connected and well informed. In case of any fraud, their reputation will go down and they would be kicked out of the society. So service providers offer their best services at the most reasonable prices.
  2. Always stay in touch with your roots: By bridging the gap between people, you can always increase communication, sit and solve problems and help the fellow members.
  3. Collaborate and celebrate: Societyhive draws your attention to the children of lesser God and gives you an opportunity to help them. It’s said, the best use of wealth is when it is used to help the needy ones.

Services offered by Societyhive:

  1. A private website is provided where information about all members is stored. In this way, no person with a fake profile can enter your society.
  2. Manage your society by making it safer, happier and a fun place to live. Accounting and billing information is stored here. You can meet like-minded people and raise support for social causes.
  3. There is an advice section where you can ask fellow members for advice regarding all issues. Looking up for recommended service providers was never so easy.
  4. Societyhive provides multilingual support.

Society123

It is a SAAS catering the financial needs of housing societies. This software manages the accounting and auditing essentials of landlords, industrial estates, builders and developers. It works on computers and mobile phones with an internet connection.

Advantages of using Society123:

  1. Simple operation: Log on into your account, assign the tasks to the software and it’ll do everything.
  2. Different user accounts like Administrators, Managing committee and Vendor staff can be created that allow them to access the accounts at different levels. By this method, no unaccounted person can log on and make changes.
  3. Completely accurate information is made available at all times to the members.
  4. The entire process is automated, hence there is reduced administrative work.

Society123 performs the following tasks:

  1. Bill generation
  2. Automatic bill delivery via e-mails
  3. Bank reconciliation
  4. Alerting the recipients of pending bills by SMS
  5. Calculating accurate interest rates as per the society norms
  6. R&D section
  7. Parking allotments
  8. Managing tasks, meetings, registers, tasks, complaints, compliances, circulars and events

Society123 aims to reduce your tensions and make sure that you never miss any payments.

The main aim of all these software’s is to bring in a transparent management and account handling system that is solely handled by technology and all users can have access to all system related information.

Does your housing society have a SAAS apartment management software? If the answer is negative, we advise you to check the following seven SAAS software’s and buy and install one today itself. You can also talk to our Software Analyst to find which software fits your requirement best .