Indian SaaS ecosystem is at the cusp of transformation. According to Nasscom, India’s total SaaS revenue breached the $3.5 billion mark as of March 2020, growing at a CAGR of 30% and the SaaS industry has the potential to grow 6X to $13-15 billion by 2025. Indian SaaS has evolved into a multi-billion dollar industry today with startups raising growth capital from both domestic and international VCs. Homegrown B2B companies like Zoho, Freshworks, and Chargebee have become top global companies, which reinstated the confidence of investors in the Indian B2B SaaS business. Indian SaaS startups are now getting valuation multiples at par with global peers.

At Kae Capital, we are very bullish on India’s SaaS potential and have been investing in SaaS since 2012. Around 25% of our portfolio consists of SaaS startups. We were the first institutional investor in SaaS startups like Mayadata, Hippo Video, and Disprz. Our broad thesis on SaaS has remained built from India for the world and founders with unique insights about the market. (Please write to veenu@kae-capital.com or gaurav@kae-capital.com if you are building interesting SaaS businesses and want to have a discussion)

Sales Stack- The pandemic has accelerated the adoption of Remote Selling

Sales stack existed long before the pandemic and the pandemic has only accelerated this evolution. With the advent of remote work globally, we are forced to work from our homes and companies are looking for solutions to work and collaborate with their globally scattered employees. Managers are looking for solutions to onboard, train, monitor and increase the productivity of their remote teams.

The set of softwares have evolved to meet the needs of the sales team. The Sales Stack is a set of softwares that teams can use to ensure that Sales, Marketing and Growth are aligned and able to efficiently work together to maximize revenue.

Pandemic has increased the need for such softwares to manage remote teams efficiently, which has led to evolution of many startups focusing on revenue teams. According to Gartner, by 2025 80% of B2B sales interactions between suppliers and buyers will occur in digital channels and 60% of B2B sales organizations will transition from experience and intuition-based selling to data-driven selling. Sales teams across the globe embraced the new normal and learned to collaborate and sell digitally with the help of different technology solutions.

Sales Stack can be broadly categorized into four interconnected functions-

Sales stack works on top of systems of records like CRM and systems of communications/engagement like Zoom, Slack, and LinkedIn.

1. Sales Enablement– It is the core of the sales stack, it enables the sales team with the content, guidance and training to perform their job effectively. It helps reps understand what to know, say and show to the prospects.
2. Sales Engagement– It equips sales reps to reach and communicate with customers in a personalized and efficient way. It helps reps send the right information to the customer and keep track of actions on the leads.
3. Conversational Intelligence– It helps managers monitor and interpret the conversations of reps and prospects. It is helpful in identifying the areas of improvement for reps. Simply put, it helps to listen and learn from sales calls.
4. Revenue Operations– It is an end-to-end business process to provide transparency across marketing, sales, and renewals. In simple words, it streamlines the processes to align revenue teams, providing them with better visibility of the sales funnel.