A well coordinated and focused Kirak effort brought the Hyderabad SaaS companies together on 2nd March 2019 at Novotel HICC. Kudos to all the Volunteers and Telangana State Innovation Cell for pulling SaaSt 2019 together. Tarun Davuluri talks about what went behind the scenes in organizing the event here. The concept of organizing the event drew inspiration from SaaS Bhoomi, an annual conference out of Chennai, billed as Asia’s largest SaaS conference by founders for founders.
SaaSt 2019 was refreshing for a few reasons
- The openness exhibited by Khaapit SaaS founders on letting others in on their journey. Talking about success, pitfalls in the journey, opening about failures and sharing tips on To-do’s and Not to do’s.
- The format of the event was a careful balance of views expressed by companies who are operating on a global scale vs focused on Indian market alone, companies who have raised external capital, bootstrapped companies, companies with one founder or many founders, healthy contribution by VC’s and representation from global SaaS technology providers like AWS and ServiceNow.
- VC fund to support the event. This shows the strength of SaaS ecosystem in Hyderabad as it’s not entirely dependant on government sponsorship or individual SaaS companies.
Few takeaways from the evening
Abbe
Chillar
Kisko
- Stage 1 – Sell to anyone who is willing to pay for your offering/ service.
- Stage 2 – Go after your ideal customer profile. These are the customers who were your target all along.
- Stage 3 – Sell for profitability
- Stage 4 – Gun for market leadership
Kaiko Keel Paad Ke
Paise
Jhanda
I represented Gramener on a panel ‘Founders Roadmap: Journey to your first customer and beyond’. Chaitanya C, Co-founder & CIO, Ozonetel, Rohit Chennamaneni, Co-founder, Darwinbox, Ashok Varma, Founder, Report Garden shared the podium with me.
Free flowing conversation covered
- How did we decide on the number of
founders. Gramener had the highest number of founders. - How did we narrow down on the idea
for starting thebusiness. - How did we pick the target market – India vs Overseas.
- Did we raise external funding and how did we arrive at the decision. Interesting enough 3 out 4 companies were bootstrapped.
Two snippets from leaders in SaaS industry
- AWS rolled out 1800 significant features released in 2018. 80% of these originated as customer requests. AWS builds for one customer and releases for all customers. Everyone pays the same price
- ServiceNow platform approach to different customer needs – No code, Low code & Pro Code.
The SaaSt journey is off to a great start, Gramener looks forward to contributing to the SaaSt journey and the SaaS ecosystem in Hyderabad. Chaltu Ab.
Note: For the uninitiated, all Italics in this article are Hyderabadi language (a local dialect – a fusion of Urdu, Hindi & Telugu).
P.S: This article is written by Sundeep Reddy Mallu, SVP – Product, at Gramener as his experience in the
Loved it, Sundeep!
I do wonder if you or any of your co-panelists actually used Hyderabadi at the panel 🙂
Actually they did, Anand. Chaitanya’s (@Ozonetel) words were amusing. 😀