 "SaaSx 2015. Image via Tech in Asia")
At SaaSx 2015, Girish Mathrubhootham, CEO of Freshdesk and popularly known as the Rajnikanth of India’s Software as a Service (SaaS) scene, did the unthinkable. He revealed the entire spreadsheet of internal data-based metrics that he presented to his investors in 2011.
After Girish’s investors took a look at his numbers – and, honestly, at the time, they were not all that impressive – they decided to email his clients with a feedback survey. The response was overwhelmingly positive, with 96% of Freshdesk’s customers expressing approval of the product.
The fact that customers wanted to see Freshdesk expand was important for both the company and its investors. As its progress revealed, the most dynamic feature of a SaaS product is its ability to acquire and reacquire the same customers by offering insightful new features. While the transient nature of software products means that differentiation can be difficult to maintain, Girish went on to explain that capturing the market was all about moving in at the right time.
SaaSx 2015, held in Chennai, Tamil Nadu, the self-proclaimed SaaS capital of India, was full of similar insights.
At the conference, Aneesh Reddy, CEO of Capillary Technologies, a software firm that helps companies manage their customers, explained to the audience that the leap from software to SaaS was the same as that of computer to mobile – an increasing number of people were going straight to the latter. Furthermore, he explained, SaaS was a product that did not need to be specifically customized for different cultures.
