Any service-based company founder I meet, invariably at least once mention that they want to build a product or they want to make a transition from service-based to product-based business! 😀

While many entrepreneurs are pursuing it, very few succeed.

To learn the challenges faced by entrepreneurs in this pursuit, "Transitioning from IT Services to SaaS Products" was organized by eChai Ventures at IIMA Ventures.

Yash Shah shared his experiences of a successful transition for Service based to SaaS product company and we had some insightful interactions on various points.

Some of the learning nudgets from the meetup:

👉 Start promoting product as soon as you start building product not after it is ready to launch. Most of the founders wait till MVP is ready and then start looking for initial customers to get their feedback. Instead of that, it was suggested that it is preferred to start searching for clients as soon as the development of the product starts.

👉 The challenges we face in service based company would be more or less same ( client not paying on time, employees churn rate, etc.) even when the company is scaled. While in SaaS company, as the product scales, the problems would be different at each stage of 100 customers, 10000 customers or a million customers. So, as a founder, you have to be prepared for managing new challenges and finding solution for it.

👉 Customers can come up with N number of requests or features in your product. It is not advisable to go for building each feature that is requested. Customization can be done up to some level but you have to put some line to it. If customer is ready for paying customization, that then can be prioritized.

👉 Having a product based company requires a completely different mindset than having a service based company. So, if you are trying both then keep both the teams separate and do not mix them up.

Overall, it was a great learning experience and interacting.

Kudos to Jatin Chaudhary for his efforts to bring all the people together. Looking forward to attending more knowledge sharing sessions.

... and it's a wrap for SGx5 🙌

Couple of months back, we had the graduation for SGx5 cohort in Goa. SGx is a 16 week pay-it-forward program by SaaSBoomi where founders of early stage 

#saas companies go through growth acceleration with mentors and wingmates who have been through the curve.

About a year ago, Anupama and I had the good fortune of being part of the SGx4 cohort for Clientjoy (Acquired by Synup). Our learnings were crisp, clear and actionable.

They helped us with improving our account activations, getting a handle on our ICP and focusing on the right metrics. I also witnessed them helping my batchmates with their US GTM, going about category creation and setting up sales processes.

If you are a SaaS company doing $500K to $1.5M in ARR, link to apply to SGx6 is in the first comment.

Here's what you can expect if you are selected:
- Goal setting and weekly check-ins for your GTM
- Sat morning calls to hold you accountable every week
- Play-books on things you think you already know but you don't - like SEO, outbound, PPC etc
- 2 founders who will work with you and get their hands dirty, and most valuable of all
- Genuine community that also happens to be the world's largest pay-it-forward community for SaaS.

In SGx5, I had the opportunity to work with Saurabh from PMaps along with Abhishek from WeCP | We Create Problems and Mrigank from PeopleStrong. It was extremely meaningful.

A big hug for all SGx5 cohort companies - Parin from Reelo, Akash from Pibit.ai, Priyank from UrSpayce, Paul from Two Minute Reports | GoX.ai, Ayush from Adbrew and Manoj from SOCLY.io.

And ofcourse, can't forget the mentors & wingmates Dhruvil, Pallav, Sachin, Shruti, Vengat, Abhi, Ankit, Kalyan, Sakshi, Deepti, Rahul, Naman, Sudheer, Vaibhav, Utkarsh and Aastha.

Looking forward to learning via teaching in SGx6 👊

It was an interesting evening spent with services founders discussing about transitioning from services to SaaS at GVFL Limited. Here are some notes on what we discussed:

👉 𝐀𝐛𝐨𝐮𝐭 𝐝𝐨𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐛𝐨𝐭𝐡 𝐨𝐟 𝐭𝐡𝐞𝐦 𝐭𝐨𝐠𝐞𝐭𝐡𝐞𝐫
In my limited experience, doing both services business and a SaaS business together is extremely difficult. Both of them require more than your full time attention and come with very nuanced problems to be solved. Some founders are able to do it. Most companies that do this achieve a really large scale in one of those two and then start the second one. I wouldn't recommend.

👉 𝐀𝐛𝐨𝐮𝐭 𝐚𝐫𝐫𝐢𝐯𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐚𝐭 𝐩𝐫𝐢𝐜𝐢𝐧𝐠
As a service business, pricing is simpler. It is cost + margin. In SaaS however, it is difficult to arrive at a cost based pricing. Most folks recommend value based pricing but in early stages, it is unclear - the amount of value your SaaS will build for your customers. I'd recommend competitor benchmarking and then speaking to a lot of customers while running experiments. Pricing, much like user research, is an on-going exercise. It is never complete. Hubspot is $2B in ARR - changes pricing every 6 months.

👉 𝐀𝐛𝐨𝐮𝐭 𝐛𝐮𝐢𝐥𝐝𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐭𝐫𝐮𝐬𝐭
I wrote a post about building trust as a SaaS company a while back. Here's the link --> https://lnkd.in/dTVuX_9F

👉 𝐀𝐛𝐨𝐮𝐭 𝐜𝐡𝐚𝐧𝐧𝐞𝐥𝐬 𝐭𝐡𝐚𝐭 𝐰𝐨𝐫𝐤
At Clientjoy (Acquired by Synup), we tried over 10 GTM experiments. 3 of them worked. The one that worked best was building resources that answered our prospect's most difficult questions (not ebooks, not blogs - but spreadsheets or cheat-sheets). We got about 17K subscribers for these resources. 5K of them became our customers over next 18 months.

👉 𝐀𝐛𝐨𝐮𝐭 𝐟𝐢𝐧𝐝𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐜𝐨𝐦𝐟𝐨𝐫𝐭 𝐰𝐢𝐭𝐡 𝐬𝐦𝐚𝐥𝐥 𝐭𝐢𝐜𝐤𝐞𝐭 𝐩𝐚𝐲𝐦𝐞𝐧𝐭𝐬
As a services company, we are comfortable with monthly ticket sizes of $4K to $15K. SaaS most likely is 500 times less than that. Building comfort with small ticket recurring payments takes some adjustment. Having customers who you've never spoken to also takes some adjustment.

👉 𝐀𝐛𝐨𝐮𝐭 𝐜𝐡𝐚𝐧𝐠𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐦𝐢𝐧𝐝𝐬𝐞𝐭 𝐨𝐟 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐭𝐞𝐚𝐦
Services business has Clients and these Clients have requirements. SaaS companies have customer cohorts and these cohorts have problems. The mindset required to deal with clients vs customer cohorts is very different. Building that thought process within yourself and the team becomes important. The team will have to go from understanding requirements and giving quotes to listening to problems and identifying insights.

There were a couple more things discussed as well. Do join in the next time if you are around. Thank you Jatin and eChai Ventures for having me in this conversation.

Tusker AI : No-Code AI Computer Vision Platform for Image and Video Analytics

Tusker is a NO code AI Vision platform, which helps the entire Business Community by Automating their Computer Vision project in span of just few hours instead of weeks without knowledge about AI.

About the team

TUSKER AI Co-Founders worked on similar initiatives, and they also ran a couple of Bootstrap start-ups successfully for the past decade. 

They were professionals and worked in a Similar domain for the last 5 years where the computer Vision and Surveillance Industry were part of it but it Lacked Automation. 

So, this leads to thinking more about Innovation and Product Automation. So, in a nutshell, they are similar tech-savvy like-minded Entrepreneurs who have been working with a similar vision for almost a decade now. 

TUSKER AI’s co-founders were colleagues first, then friends, then became people having the same enthusiasm, and now a couple of innovators working on the same Vision to revolutionize and democratize AI. 

Eureka moment

Well Eureka moment for me itself had a long journey and after serving in the IT sector for over a decade now the pain point for me was crystal clear and I was cent percent sure what is my next goal for my community and how I can be suitable for solving this. 

As an entrepreneur for over a decade and coming from the Artificial Intelligence domain, I always wonder what more can be done to make people's lives easy. 

Also, as an AI Technologist and as a business owner, I should have the liberty to experiment with AI without having core coding knowledge and generate AI models.

How does it work?

Video link: https://www.loom.com/share/39008a8fb6dd446f8d56e8c3067399d8

Business model

SAAS-based model - per camera monthly subscription) for video analytics as well as API calls(per million images) and per model creation on our platform.  

Traction

Community support

Speaking on the behalf of the whole team, it would be an honor for us if any Technologists or any AI-Market Enthusiast could be our Mentor/Advisor as we are looking for these profiles to help us achieve our targeted goals. We are looking for “Global GTM” as our vision is to empower everyone at a Global Scale with our Global Enterprise Grade-Tool-kit, therefore we need a “Global Guidance” to reflect our visibility globally.

Embracing the power of #SaaSBoomi in Chennai!

Attending events like this fuels our journey at AllEvents, propelling us to dream bigger and set new milestones.

Don't miss out on the chance to learn, connect, and supercharge your entrepreneurial spirit. Every event is a catalyst for growth, inspiration, and lifelong connections.

Seize the opportunity to elevate your journey—because a happening life is a life well-lived!

#StayHappening

eChai's Singapore Startup Meetup is happening today (29th Feb, Thursday) at Draper Startup House Singapore from 7 pm to 9 pm.

🎙️

Monika Mehta

, Co-Founder, TrillionSale
🎙️

Tushar Tejuja

, Founder, Scout - AI Powered Talent Hunter

It will be moderated by

Smitha Saravanan

, Business Development Manager, IKIGAISG.

Free registration.   

We are proud to serve schools across the nation. 

Today, with a wide network of 5,000 schools spread across 27 states and 250 cities, every member of Saarthi Pedagogy is committed to helping schools and students improve their learning outcomes.

 

eChai's Bengaluru SaaS meetup was held today w/ 

Sai Krishna

(Superblog) and 

Amit Chavan

(Vibtree) joining the panel.

List of featured participants at https://echai.ventures/events/bengaluru-saas-meetup-feb-16-2024

Let me tell you a story that seems almost too good to be true. My name is Bhavesh, and this journey starts with a simple meeting that felt like fate. In 2019, in Ahmedabad, at a networking event by Patel Business Network, I met another Bhavesh -

Bhavesh Korat

. We both believed in doing good for others, and that’s what brought us together.

We quickly realized we shared more than just a name; we had a common dream. So, in 2020, with a small team of six, we started Brands.live. Our goal was pretty straightforward: help small businesses in India make a name for themselves without breaking the bank.

The idea was to make branding simple and accessible. We wanted every small business owner to have the chance to tell their story, to stand out, and to grow. It felt like everything just clicked into place as we worked on this.

Now, looking back, it’s amazing to see how far we’ve come. We’ve faced challenges, sure, but our belief in our mission has kept us going. We're not just building a company; we're hoping to inspire a whole community of entrepreneurs.

Our roles also complement as

Bhavesh Korat

  manages the Tech, Finance, and sales, I manage Content and Marketing.

So, back in 2019, I just tagged along with a buddy of mine because he had this meeting about some Women 4.0 ML workshops happening across India. Honestly, I wasn't all that into it; just wanted a quick way to hitch a ride to LD BRTS and head home. But then, things took a turn.

We met this guy who was all pumped about organizing the event. They were chatting away about plans and execution, and there I was, just hanging. I had a bunch of ideas popping into my head, but I kept quiet. Then they shifted gears to talking about growing their community, and I couldn't help myself—I just blurted out my two cents on how design and branding could really make a difference. That's all I really knew back then.

Turns out, this sparked a whole new conversation, and before I knew it, I was deep in discussion with Tirth, who was running this Instagram community with over 18K followers. We met again the next day, and bam, we were on the same wavelength, dreaming big about starting our own thing in the ed-tech space, which was pretty fresh at the time. We quickly cooked up MAD—short for Machine Learning, Artificial Intelligence, and Data Science. Fast forward six months, we were teaching over 300 students and had made some good cash. But then, COVID hit, and everything just fell apart. We had our share of clashes and decided to call it quits.

Fast forward again, two years later, I hit Tirth up out of the blue, thinking we should give it another shot. This time we launched HYPR, aiming to shake up the ed-tech scene. But turns out, the timing was off; the market wasn't looking for another ed-tech player. So, we had to pivot from that too.

Now, we're onto something new called YOMO. 

YOMO is a user insights platform that enables product teams to build better customer-centric products by going beyond basic analytics. It's been quite the ride, from a random meetup to launching not one, but two startups, facing setbacks and still pushing forward. If you told me back in 2019 that tagging along for a ride would lead to all this, I'd have laughed. But here we are, proof that sometimes the smallest decisions can lead you to places you never imagined.

⁠I was associated with iBall Brand since 2001 and Vikalp joined in 2008 and we did lot of projects together for 11 years.

When I discussed about the idea of making a business intelligence software with Vikalp, he immediately came to Ahmedabad from Delhi to discuss about the next steps.

Our approach to defining co-founder roles was intuitive rather than structured. Vikalp naturally gravitated towards product management due to his deep tech background and passion. Our mutual understanding was that, regardless of our individual expertise areas, we would maintain an open dialogue, challenging and questioning each other's decisions. 

This dynamic allows us to progress collectively, guided by the strong conviction of the decision-maker in any given situation.

eChai's Startup Growth Networking Meetup in Ahmedabad is happening today evening at IIMA Ventures from 6 pm to 8 pm.

ft.

Zaiba Sarang

(iThink Logistics)

Bhavesh Patel

(Brands.live)

Aditya Shah

(Because)

Vishakha Shah

(Venus Logistics)

Sushil Agrawal

(Saarthi Pedagogy)

I'll be moderating this meetup.

Free registration at eChai.Ventures

We are hosting the Hiring AI Talent for Startups meetup in Bengaluru today evening at WeCP HQ, HSR Layout from 6 pm to 8 pm.

Abhishek Kaushik

(WeCP)

Shivam Tiwari

(John Jacobs - LensKart)

Shreyans Panchal

 (Yomo AI)

Free registration at eChai.Ventures

From the earlier eChai SaaS Social with founder friends from the city at MagentaInsights HQ.

Small Group. Candid Conversations. Startup Folks.

Great to catch up with many new founder friends from Ahmedabad.

Vikas Mundhra & Vikalp Somani (MagentaInsights)

Yash Shah (Clientjoy)

VIKASH RAJPUROHIT & Keshav Dhamecha (VastraApp)

Pankaj Bhimani (58Miles)

Kush Prajapati (Redicine)

Pratik Patel (Flo Mobility)

Himani Kankaria (Missive Digital)

Bhavik Makwana (ZenDevX)

Anuj Dalal (Zestard)

Mitesh Shethwala (Currently)

Harsha Bhurani (Hummingbird Consulting)

Jay Patel (Momentum Ventures)

Koumal Kalantry (Ankk Cares)

Swayam Raval (Admyre Club)

Nishi Jain (Vibes Good)

Niren Panchal (Brittman & Workex)

Foram Popat (HROne)

List of participants at https://echai.ventures/events/echai-saas-social-in-ahmedabad-feb-07-2024

Conversations going beyond businesses but all align to make businesses bigger n better.

It was fun being part of today’s eChai SaaS Social at Magenta Insights office.

One journey setting path for another journey. Problems/Challenges bringing people together for bigger - brighter and more productive solutions.

Thanks you

Vikas Mundhra

and

Jatin Chaudhary

! cannot miss to mention - the happiness bell  is such a motivating n cute thing. 

Entrepreneurs present are great minds bringing innovative solutions.

And we all sneaked in for a quick photo shoot. Looks fab. Great places designed for best working - Devx.

Cheers

We'll be hosting eChai's SaaS Social today evening in Ahmedabad.

Small Group. Candid Conversations. SaaS Folks.

We'll have parallel consumer business social also. Later on we'll have common gathering with both the groups.

More info at https://echai.ventures/events/echai-saas-social-in-ahmedabad-feb-07-2024

Notes from Startup Exits and M&A Forum

It’s important for both the companies - the company being acquired and the acquirer - to evaluate not just products, services and financials but also whether there is culture fit between the leadership and the team at large.

⁠Due Diligence can bring to light compliance issues as well some times and it is ok. As long as it does not show gross negligence or mis-representation in data, Due Diligence typically goes through.

Diligence at the time of acquisition and diligence at the time of fund-raising are quite different. At the time of acquisition, it is much more focused on team, technology, GTM channels and financials while diligence at the time of fund raising is mostly legal and financial with some attention to other aspects.

It’s difficult for startups to plan for an exit. The plan should be created to become valuable for customers - everything else typically follows.

Things to keep in mind during fundraising for early stage founders.

1. It is crucial to meticulously select a list of venture capitalists whose interests align with those of your company. This strategic alignment ensures that both parties are working towards common goals, thereby fostering a more fruitful and synergistic partnership.

2. View funding primarily as a catalyst for growth. Often, funds raised merely for the purpose of survival can lead a company into a detrimental cycle. Instead, focus on utilizing capital to accelerate development and expansion, thereby enhancing the company's long-term viability and success.

3. Be aware that certain aspects of your business may raise concerns or 'red flags' from an investor's perspective. It is imperative to continuously strengthen the 'green flags' or positive aspects of your venture. By reinforcing these strengths, you can effectively mitigate the impact of any potential red flags and present your business in a more favourable light to potential investors.

Things to keep in mind during fundraising for early stage founders.

There are no permanent ‘No’s. When an investor passed on your deal, ask for permission to keep them updated every quarter and then enrol them into a list to which you send out a quarterly update across your product, team and growth. You never know when interest in your startup might peak.

Fundraising is a full-time activity for 1 founder. Pitch to as many people as you can. Pitch, Ask for feedback, improve, repeat.

At early stages, valuation is more of an art than a science. Ultimately, when you are at the negotiating table - everything falls back to how desperate you are to raise and how convinced they are to invest in you.

Things to keep in mind during fundraising for early stage founders.

1) It is very important to know/understand when is the right time to raise funds. Don’t raise at the last minute else you won’t have any leverage.  Also consider there may be multiple ways to increase your company’s cash including debt options 

2) In the struggle between balancing funds and growing customers,  try to focus on growing customers using any means necessary.  Remember if there is growth, funds will follow. 

3) During the process of raising funds, anything could go wrong. Don’t rest just because you have a signed term sheet. It’s never over until the funds are in your bank account. 

4) Having some kind of leverage is the most important thing while raising funds.  

You can have leverage if,

a) your growth is strong 
b) multiple VCs are interested in putting money creating competitive situations 
c) founders have a history of building successful companies before

Heading to Dubai! 🌍✈️

All set for SaaSBoomi Qafila ‘24 -  a three-day exclusive initiative aimed at building an India-Middle East SaaS corridor.

At TechBridge Nation'24, we’re thrilled to showcase how Plutomen can be your strategic partner in XR-powered workforce transformation. The GCC market presents immense potential, and we’re eager to share insights on how Plutomen can contribute to the tech landscape in this region.

Join us from Jan 28th to Feb 6th in Dubai 📅!! Looking forward to connecting with industry leaders, innovators, and fellow enthusiasts. 🤝

 Hello Ahmedabad SaaS heads! 🙏

Save the date - January 25, 2024 - for the SaaSBoomi Social! No agenda, just free-flowing conversations, laughter, and loads of fun! Connect and build relationships within the dynamic Ahmedabad SaaS community. Mark your calendars, gather your friends, and get ready to soak in the SaaS vibes.

RSVP now: https://forms.gle/1FvZ4i6HcWh2tiYMA 🥂