SaaSBOOMi, a volunteer-driven community of product leaders and SaaS founders, hosted an in-person event at the Rosewood Sand Hill Ballroom in Menlo Pa

Rise of India SaaS

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2022-07-06 19:00:08

SaaSBOOMi, a volunteer-driven community of product leaders and SaaS founders, hosted an in-person event at the Rosewood Sand Hill Ballroom in Menlo Park last month that brought in founders, venture capitalists, serial entrepreneurs and industry legends.

The SaaS market in India has seen a rapid growth in the past few years – including a NASDAQ IPO for Freshworks. Many Indian companies in this sector continue to attract a diverse range of investor interests across various investment stages.

The event began with Manav Garg, Founder and CEO of Eka Software Solutions, and Girish Mathrubootham, Founder and CEO of Freshworks, walking through the beginnings of SaaSBOOMi (in 2015) and the success of India SaaS companies. At least 19 companies have unicorn valuations. With 1500+ companies in India’s SaaS industry, they generate $3-$4b in revenues each year – which is 1% of the global market. The goal is to grow to 6% by 2030.

Vinod Khosla spoke next (via Zoom) in a conversation moderated by Manav Garg. He talked about the importance of hiring the right people in the company. He cited examples of how the early hires at Sun Microsystems went on to become CEOs of large, public companies: Carol Bartz became CEO of Autodesk in 1992 (and, later in 2009, the CEO of Yahoo!); Eric Schmidt became CEO of Novell in 1997 (and, later in 2001, the CEO of Google). While there is talk of the “PayPal Mafia” today, there existed a “Sun Microsystems Mafia” long before that J. He referred to the article “Engineering the Gene pool of a company” on khoslaventures.com.