Indian SaaS Firms Expected to Touch $ 20 Billion Revenue by 2022

The new report prediction that was released on Tuesday has revealed that India's Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) companies such as Zoho, Druva, Icertis, and Freshworks have fielded the innovation in India, with SaaS firms poised to reach between $18 to $20 billion in revenue by 2022.

The Indian SaaS companies have the potential to capture a 7-9 percent share of the global SaaS market by 2022, according to a new report by Bain & Company that analyzed a wide range of Indian SaaS companies which have, since 2010, evolved from the rise of a few upstarts to a multibillion-dollar industry today.

The companies such as Zoho, Druva, Icertis, and Freshworks have breached the $100 million annual recurring revenue (ARR) mark, with a healthy pipeline of companies well placed to follow over the next 12 to 18 months.
Acclaimed first-gen founders, such as Sridhar Vembu of Zoho and Girish Mathrubootham of Freshworks, have played a pivotal role in India's SaaS journey by actively engaging to build a community of budding entrepreneurs, which led to the development of many new ventures and immense job creation.

Arpan Sheth, partner and leader of Bain & Company's Asia-Pacific Technology, Vector and Advanced Analytics practices says "We now have a thriving ecosystem of enablers comprised of both domestic and global SaaS investors, over a hundred SaaS angels with four or more investments, incubators and accelerators and SaaS development events and initiatives sponsored by communities such as SaaSBOOMi."

Arpan further adds, "The impact of these enablers can be witnessed in SaaS companies' faster trajectory to scale in recent years, with over 50 companies having breached the $10 million ARR milestone and many more are expected to follow," Sheth added.
The Indian SaaS companies are trying to scale through specific initiatives such as investment in market creation via freemium offerings, innovative monetisation models and clear articulation of benefits to the customer with tangible return on investment (ROI) metrics.
"Companies such as Yellow Messenger and Vernacular.ai are closing large, global-sized contracts by targeting marquee customers in the Indian market," the report mentioned. Indian SaaS companies today have different areas of focus, classified across multiple vectors such as size of customer, type of solution and geography of focus.

"SaaS in India has recently witnessed significant funding traction, surpassing $1.3 billion of annual investment in 2019. Horizontal business software was the largest sub-segment, accounting for two-thirds of all SaaS investment and vertical-specific SaaS grew the fastest, albeit on a small base," informed Lalit Reddy, partner and leader in Bain India's Private Equity and Digital Delivery practices.