For some time there have been Indian companies building SaaS products and selling it across the world (Zoho/Freshworks/etc.) but we’re now starting to see global companies thinking about how to sell and price their products in India.
While India’s nowhere near the next top destination for selling SaaS in terms of short-term revenue opportunities, rough ordering being the US, EU, ANZ, then rest of the world, it must be falling on folks radar to build a presence and more so a brand here. If India’s Slack and Segment are indeed Slack and Segement then there’s lower likelihood of a local company to having fertile grounds to build solid foundations in a relatively incubated fashion which could then leverage to compete with across the world.
What’s gotten me thinking about this is stumbling upon Slack’s India pricing. If your company is located in India, then you only pay 40% of their regular plans (60% off!). That comes out to to about $3.2/mo or about ₹220 per employee per month or ₹2200 per employee, annually. Even at Slack’s margins I cannot imagine this being “worth it” so to speak.
I look forward to seeing how this plays out in the next couple years. In which sectors do companies take the market in India and if Indian which markets do they take across the world. I have hunches on how this will play out but look forward to watching it closely.
Varadh 