According to a NASSCOM report, India is among the fastest-growing SaaS markets in the world with an impressive growth rate of 34% every year. It is expected that India’s SaaS market will be worth $3.4 billion by 2022. By the same time, the global SaaS market will be worth $129 billion. With global markets contributing around 70% of the total SaaS revenues generated by Indian SaaS companies, India will be exporting SaaS products worth $20 billion by 2022.
Here is a list of top 10 Indian SaaS startups serving both the Indian and global markets:
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Zoho
Chennai-based SaaS behemoth Zoho was founded by Sridhar Vembu in 1996. It started as AdventNet and focused on providing network management products before entering the cloud-based business in 2009 after changing its name to Zoho. The company now offers more than 30 SaaS-based apps to help companies increase productivity, manage projects, boost sales and handle IT support. Today, Zoho has more than 50 million users across 180 countries. Furthermore, Zoho is among the few companies that have remained bootstrapped and profitable since inception.
HighRadius
Founded by Sashi Narahari in 2006, HighRadius is a fintech company that uses artificial intelligence to help its clients to automate their account receivables and payment processes so they can manage their cash flows more efficiently. HighRadius started with merely 20 customers and now offers its services to more than 350 customers around the globe across multiple industries processing transactions worth more than $1.3 trillion. For more than a decade, HighRadius was bootstrapped by Sashi Narahari. The company raised its first investment in 2017 and has already raised $125 million from Citi Ventures, Susquehanna Growth Equity and ICONIQ Capital.
Freshworks
SaaS-based unicorn Freshworks was founded as Freshdesk by Girish Mathrubootham, along with Shan Krishnasamy in 2010 to empower the customer support teams to work with the customers to resolve their issues in an effective and efficient manner. In less than a decade, Freshworks has emerged as one of India’s breakthrough startup with more than 150 companies using its SaaS-based products to run their businesses. It joined India’s coveted unicorn club in 2018. Till date, Freshworks has raised a total of $399 million from prominent investors like Accel, CapitalG, Sequoia Capital, and Tiger Global Management.
Druva
Pune-based Druva is an all-in-one data protection provider. Founded by Jaspreet Singh, along with Milind Borate in 2008, Druva offers complete data protection to its customers by providing services like data recovery, data migration, ransomware protection and cloud backup on demand.
Druva has emerged as a leader in the cloud data protection and management industry and it is among the few private companies to generate $100 million in annual recurring revenue. The startup has helped more than 4,000 customers to protect their data while also bringing down the high costs involved with data security by removing the need for all the unnecessary hardware. Druva became a unicorn last year, along with Icertis. Till date, it has raised $328 million from Nexus Venture Partners, Sequoia Capital, Dell Technologies Capital and Orios Venture Partners.
Icertis
Icertis is a contract management startup. It was founded by Monish Darda and Samir Bodas in 2009. Icertis enables enterprises to manage different kind of contracts to help them ensure compliance, negotiate contracts and handle procurement in order to streamline their supply chain operations.
Starting its operations in India, the startup now manages 6.5 million contracts in over 40 languages across more than 90 countries globally. Some of their clients include giants like Microsoft, Airbus, Adobe, Cognizant and Wipro. Last year, Icertis joined the famed unicorn club by raising a massive $115 million from its investors which included names like Greycroft, PremjiInvest, Eight Roads, Meritech Capital Partners and B Capital Group. Till date, Icertis has raised a total of $211 million across multiple rounds.
Capillary Technologies
Cloud-based customer engagement startup Capillary Technologies was started by Aneesh Reddy, Krishna Mehra and Ajay Modani in 2008. Capillary started its operations in Bangalore with SaaS-based mobile-first loyalty program. After a steady growth during the early years and expanding to 10 countries, Krishna Mehra and Ajay Modani had left the company by 2015. At the same time, Capillary was burning cash and was forced to close operations in a few markets. Till now, Capillary was trying to scale its business by using just a single product.
With the growth of e-commerce, Aneesh took the opportunity to turn Capillary into an omnichannel customer engagement platform to help brands across both physical stores and online portals. This approach enabled the startup grow once again and it is now working with more than 400 brands like Walmart, Pizza Hut, Samsung, KFC, and PUMA across 30 countries. Till date, Capillary has raised over $100 million from investors like Norwest Venture Partners, Sequoia Capital, InnoVen Capital and Warburg Pincus.
Manthan
Founded by Atul Jalan in 2003, Manthan is a business intelligence and analytics provider. It offers cloud-based analytics products which help its clients with consumer-facing businesses to grow by taking data-driven actions to boost customer engagement across different channels like website, physical store and app. With more than 200 clients across over 21 countries, Manthan is among one of the leading data analytics companies in India. Till date, Manthan has raised nearly $100 million from a host of investors including Chiratae Ventures, InnoVen Capital, Temasek Holdings and Norwest Venture Partners.
CleverTap
Founded by Anand Jain, Suresh Kondamudi and Sunil Thomas in 2013, CleverTap is a mobile marketing startup, which was previously known as WizRocket. It uses artificial intelligence and machine learning to boost user retention by providing personalized customer experience based on their needs. CleverTap signed its first customer in 2014 and now it has more than 8,000 customers across 100 countries. The startup claims to have helped its customers gain $2 billion in incremental revenue. CleverTap has raised $76.6 million from investors like Accel, Sequoia Capital and Tiger Global.
Whatfix
SaaS-based B2B startup Whatfix was founded by Khadim Bhatti and Vara Kumar in 2013. Whatfix is helping companies accelerate user adoption of their software applications by easing the process of onboarding, training and support through its personalized and interactive step by step in-app guides.
While it started in India, the startup has expanded its operations globally and the majority of its revenues is now generated from overseas. With more than 630 companies using Whatfix around the world, the startup saw its revenue grow 3X in 2019 alone. Over the years, Whatfix has managed to raise around $50 million from the likes of Sequoia Capital, Stellaris Venture Partners, Helion Venture Partners and Eight Roads.
MoEngage
Founded by Raviteja Dodda and Yashwanth Kumar in 2014, MoEngage is a SaaS-based mobile-first customer engagement platform. It uses data analytics to help its clients to better understand their customer behaviour and patterns. This understanding helps the companies to boost customer engagement by sending personalized notifications and offers across multiple channels like apps, emails and SMS.
Over the course of five years, MoEngage has been able to serve a number of companies including names like OYO, Ola Cabs, Samsung, BigBasket and Airtel across 35 countries. Till date, MoEngage has secured $40.8 million in funding from their investors like Helion Venture Partners, Exfinity Venture Partners, Snapdeal’s Kunal Bahl and Rohit Bansal, Taxiforsure’s Raghunandan G and Matrix Partners.