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<ul><li>The Indian SaaS segment has the potential to clock a total turnover of $75 billion by 2025.</li><li>One in five global <keyword id="6361043" type="General" weightage="20" keywordseo="software" source="Orion">software</keyword> demand is likely to be met by Indian <keyword id="6756963" type="General" weightage="20" keywordseo="saas-companies" source="Orion">SaaS companies</keyword> in the next four years, according to experts.</li><li>On one hand large global corporations, even tech giants like Amazon and Twitter, are buying software solutions from India.</li><li>This has led to a mad rush from venture capitalists who have pumped in $1.7 billion into these startups in 2020.</li><li>Seven unicorns have been created in this space in the last year and a half alone.</li></ul>The sudden change in global trends and the rise of ‘remote everything’ — from learning to work — has propelled the software-as-a-service (SaaS) industry. And their customers include marquee names like Amazon, Twitter, <keyword id="596" type="General" weightage="20" keywordseo="hyundai" source="Orion">Hyundai</keyword>, Domino’s, and Philips, just to name a few. Venture capital firms like Accel, Tiger Global and Sequoia, looking for the next gold rush, have pumped in $1.7 billion across 128 deals in 2020, and more in 2021, creating at least seven unicorns in the space of less than 20 months, in India alone. Enterprise tech accounted for 13% of deal volume among top investors in the first half of 2021, says a NASSCOM PGA Labs report. According to a report by investment firm Chiratae Ventures and consulting firm Zinnov last month, the Indian SaaS segment has the potential to clock a total turnover of <a href="https://www.businessinsider.in/business/startups/news/india-software-service-sector-needs-more-than-200000-employees-by-2025/articleshow/84632003.cms">$75 billion</a> by 2025. But where will this revenue come from? The answer is simple — market and product expansion. As the world stepped into a lockdown in March 2020, the SaaS companies had a new reality to face — the demand for softwares and solutions that required limited/no physical efforts and showed faster results was the need of the hour. More enterprises were on a hunt for tech solutions in the latest virtual scene and SaaS companies started seeing more customer interest. The increased customer interest also resulted in increased flow of venture capital for this segment and India added seven SaaS unicorns — private companies valued at or more than $1 billion — during the pandemic since 2020. <div type="image" title="Amazon, Twitter, Hyundai, and Domino’s are buying Indian software fuelling a $75 billion dream chased by top VCs like Sequoia and Tiger Global" msid="85647410" hostid="261"></div> While the investors’ interest brought in more money for the SaaS companies to grow, the increased customer interest has brought in more revenue. Zoho, which is a 25-year old bootstrapped company that has not raised funds so far, has customers like Amazon, Zomato and Xiaomi. Here's Sridhar Vembu, the founder of Zoho, explaining the software boom, in a recent interview with Business Insider. <div type="Video" msid="85650341" hostid="261" title="Zoho founder explains India's software boom in the last 24 months" dataSource="BUSINESSINSIDER" thumbUrl="https://denmark.timesinternet.in/cmslite/api/app/images.jpg?msid=85650341"></div> Conversational artificial intelligence (AI) solutions company Uniphore ⁠— backed by Cisco, Sistema Capital Partners and ⁠Chiratae Ventures — claims to have noted a 3-fold year-on-year increase in their revenue in the financial year 2021, meanwhile contract management system has termed this fiscal the best one for them. Similar trend of increased revenue has been witnessed by most of the big SaaS names in India. Backed by Google and led by founder Girish Mathrubootham, help desk software company Freshworks ⁠— which has bagged contracts from Vice Media Group, Toshiba and Cisco ⁠— claimed to have crossed $300 million in annual recurring revenue (ARR) in February 2021. ARR is a metric used by SaaS businesses to show the revenue one can expect on a yearly basis. “It’s no secret that the future of business and scale is SaaS-driven, more so in the post-pandemic landscape. What’s interesting however is how quickly Indian companies have set a global benchmark for the industry. The exponential growth unlocked in the last 5 years is a testament to how capital efficient the Indian SaaS industry is,” Venkatesh Peddi, executive director and head of SaaS investments at Chiratae Ventures, previously said. One in five global software demands will be met by Indian SaaS companies in the next four years, Chiratae-Zinnov report added. What are Indian startups doing to attract these customers? With enough revenue and funding to aid sustain and grow their businesses, Indian SaaS companies have now put in greater focus on penetrating deeper into the international markets. <div type="image" title="Amazon, Twitter, Hyundai, and Domino’s are buying Indian software fuelling a $75 billion dream chased by top VCs like Sequoia and Tiger Global" msid="85647440" hostid="261"></div> Monish Darda, co-founder and chief technical officer (CTO) of Icertis, talked to Business Insider about the three important aspects for international expansion for any SaaS business. First, ensuring that the technology is in accordance with the market one if planning to enter. Second, readiness from the team perspective and having local workforce who understand the market well. Third, cracking right partnerships to expand business. “If you look at contract management, you will see that for India we will not only integrate electronic signatures from Adobe Sign, which are global, but also add e-Mudhra which is a very Indian specific digital signature. You always have these different things in different markets that you need to cater to, to be successful. So there is technology,” he explained. Ankur Bansal, co-founder of BlackSoil Capital, in an interaction with Business Insider said that it’s almost a given for all SaaS companies, who have found their product-market fit, to think global. Having global customers changes the valuation of a SaaS company “dramatically” and offers much better margins to the company. “In terms of the size of the contract, the understanding of it and the speed of execution — everything on all counts in favour of a SaaS company… Anyway SaaS business margins are great, and on top of it if the company is catering to customers based out of the US or Europe then it becomes way better,” Bansal added. SEE ALSO <a href="https://www.businessinsider.in/stock-market/news/infosys-airtel-kaveri-seed-and-other-top-stocks-to-watch-out-for-on-august-26/slidelist/85645299.cms">Infosys, Airtel, Kaveri Seed and other top stocks to watch out for on August 26 </a> <a href="https://www.businessinsider.in/personal-finance/news/investors-will-be-able-to-open-fixed-deposit-accounts-fds-on-google-pay/articleshow/85646488.cms">Google Pay to let users open fixed deposits on its platform </a> <a href="https://www.businessinsider.in/science/news/popular-pro-vaccine-reddit-page-calls-on-founders-to-do-more-to-combat-covid-19-disinformation/articleshow/85639053.cms">Popular pro-vaccine Reddit page calls on founders to do more to combat COVID-19 disinformation</a>

Amazon, Twitter, Hyundai, and Domino’s are buying Indian software fuelling a $75 billion dream chased by top VCs like Sequoia and Tiger Global

For the last five years, a team of 150 engineers have been working day in and out in a tiny<a href="http://www.businessinsider.in/searchresult.cms?query=indian+village&amp;sortorder=effectivedate"> Indian village</a> in <keyword id="239945" type="CITY" weightage="100" keywordseo="Tenkasi">Tenkasi</keyword>, about 650 kms south of <a href="http://www.businessinsider.in/searchresult.cms?query=chennai&amp;sortorder=effectivedate">Chennai</a>, building a world-class context-aware helpdesk software called <keyword id="3860891" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="100" keywordseo="Zoho-Desk">Zoho Desk</keyword>. 
 This may sound like it's straight out of the plot of a movie, but <keyword id="191862" type="PERSON" weightage="100" keywordseo="Sridhar-Vembu">Sridhar Vembu</keyword>, CEO of <a href="http://www.businessinsider.in/searchresult.cms?query=zoho&amp;sortorder=effectivedate">Zoho Corp</a> has ensured it became a reality with his able guidance and vision. As a result, <keyword id="265415" type="COMPANY" weightage="100" keywordseo="ZOHO">Zoho</keyword>, a multi-billion dollar customer management (CRM) company with offices in <keyword id="12864" type="COMPANY" weightage="100" keywordseo="Chennai">Chennai</keyword> and <a href="http://www.businessinsider.in/searchresult.cms?query=silicon+valley&amp;sortorder=effectivedate">Silicon Valley,</a> has achieved something no company can boast of- harnessing and training the talent in rural India to build a software product for a global market. 
 “Zoho has challenged conventional wisdom so many times in its history. We built the first software products from India when IT services were the rage and established them in the global market. We are now showcasing something that has never been done before: the first software product created in rural India, world-class in its refinement, competing with the best,” said a proud Sridhar Vembu, CEO, <keyword id="447145" type="ORGANIZATION" weightage="100" keywordseo="Zoho-Corp">Zoho Corp</keyword>. 
 Zoho Desk, which is the sixth product that the company has launched in 2016, uses customer data from past interactions and from other Zoho products, like Zoho CRM and <keyword id="3870877" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="100" keywordseo="zoho-projects">Zoho Projects</keyword>, to organise tickets and intelligently present information to agents so that they can better understand a customer's problem and resolve it efficiently. 
 
It thus helps companies deliver the right solution at the right time. Its clean user interface packs innovations like Work Modes that help agents send context-aware responses, the Headquarters dashboard that provides the visibility managers need to make better decisions, and the Team Feed to help the entire company participate in customer service. 
 
As is the case with every Zoho product, Zoho Desk is also available for free up to 10 users. Paid plans begin at Rs 720 per user per month for the Professional Edition and increase to Rs 1,500 per user per month for the Enterprise version. 
 
The company's 15 acre Tenkasi facility from where Zoho Desk was built started out with three engineers who had moved from Chennai five years ago, which has today blossomed into a modest-size office housing 150 employees. Vembu himself makes it a point to visit this office once every three months. "Investment in building the entire centre at Tenkasi stood at Rs 3,000 per sq feet, excluding land costs," he revealed. To accommodate more employees, the company is also expanding its facility, which is going to be three times bigger than the existing office. 
 
 
 
From the very beginning of this plan, Vembu was clear about one thing- he had to first build a durable product, regardless of how long it took him. Infact, it was this very decision that stopped him from making Zoho Desk public despite it being ready for a year. Instead, the company used those 12 months to test out the product themselves and launch it in the market once they were absolutely sure of it. 
 
That seemed to paid off wonderfully for Vembu, as Zoho Desk currently boasts of handling 50 million tickets for 20 million users. Vembu is of the hope that out of 150,000 organizations across the world that Zoho counts as its customers, atleast one-third of them will become Zoho Desk users, making it a force to reckon with while it takes on two large rivals- global major <a href="http://www.businessinsider.in/searchresult.cms?query=zendesk&amp;sortorder=effectivedate">Zendesk </a>and local product <a href="http://www.businessinsider.in/searchresult.cms?query=freshdesk&amp;sortorder=effectivedate">Freshdesk</a>. 
 
Naturally, the road till here was fraught with challenges as Vembu attempted to build everything from ground up, but that hardly deterred the man who is known for building a one of the most profitable global tech company without any external funding. 
 
"We would have definitely built it faster if we had chosen a city like Chennai, but from the onset we were clear that we wanted to build a world-class product from rural India using the talent that most often than not remains untapped," he explained. 
 
Combine that with Vembu's belief that rural talent shouldn't have to leave home to find opportunity and you get an insight into the mind of the man who has proved that ‘a determined and sincere group of people can build path-breaking products anywhere.’ 
 
Sticking to their guns, the company developed local talents through its own university, Zoho University, recruited engineers through campus placements, then trained and mentored them. 
 At a time when almost all companies are moving from the suburbs to the cities to make a name for themselves, Zoho is busy reversing that trend to prove that you don't really need to be in <keyword id="6357722" type="COMPANY" weightage="100" keywordseo="silicon-valley">Silicon Valley</keyword> to build a world-class product. 
 
 
 
Image credit: Zoho

Here's how Zoho's Sridhar Vembu built a world-class software product from a tiny village in India

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Amazon, Twitter, Hyundai, and Domino’s are buying Indian software fuelling a $75 billion dream chased by top VCs like Sequoia and Tiger Global

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Here's how Zoho's Sridhar Vembu built a world-class software product from a tiny village in India

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