Manav Garg is CEO and founder of Eka Software Solutions and founding partner of SaaSboomi and Together Fund.
Software as a service is one of the most important technology sectors today. While its transformative potential was fairly clear prior to the pandemic, the sudden shift towards dispersed workforces skyrocketed interest in SaaS products as medium and large businesses adopted digital and remote sales processes and greatly expanded their usefulness.
This phenomenon is global, but India in particular has the opportunity to take its SaaS impulses to the next level. According to a report by SaaSBOOMi and McKinsey, India’s SaaS industry is projected to have sales of $ 50 billion to $ 70 billion by 2030, capturing 4 to 6% of the global SaaS market, creating up to $ 1 trillion in value .
The Indian SaaS industry is expected to generate sales of $ 50 billion to $ 70 billion by 2030 and capture 4 to 6% of the global SaaS market.
There are certain key long-term trends that are driving this expansion.
The rise of Indian SaaS unicorns
The Indian SaaS community has seen a deluge of innovation and success. Entrepreneurs in India have started about a thousand funded SaaS companies in the past few years, doubling the rate from five years ago, creating several unicorns in the process. Together, these companies have total sales of $ 2-3 billion and represent approximately 1% of the global SaaS market, according to SaaSBOOMi and McKinsey.
These firms differ in terms of the customers they serve and the issues they solve, but some have attracted worldwide attention during the pandemic by allowing flexibility for new remote workers. Zoho helped streamline this pivot point by providing sales teams with apps for collateral, videos, and demos. Freshworks provided companies with a seamless customer experience platform, and Eka expanded its cloud platform to unify workflows from procurement to payments for the CFO office.
Other SaaS firms stayed busy in different ways. Over the course of the pandemic, 10 new unicorns have appeared: Postman, Zenoti, Innovacer, Highradius, Chargebee and Browserstack, Mindtickle, Byju, UpGrad and Unacademy. There have also been several cases of sizeable venture capital funding, including a $ 150 million deal for Postman, bringing the total amount raised by the Indian SaaS community to around $ 1.5 billion in 2020, the Four times the investment in 2018.
India’s path to leadership
While the Indian SaaS community has made admirable strides in recent years, there are several key growth drivers that could result in sales of up to $ 1 trillion by 2030. This includes:
The global hub for digital market launch
The number of companies familiar with evaluating products and making business decisions through Zoom is growing rapidly. This introduction of the digital go-to-market fundamentally balances the competitive conditions for Indian companies in terms of access to customers and end markets.