SaaSBoomi

Exotel sells across India, South East Asia and the Middle East, so Bhatia can compare emerging markets rather than treating the US as the only destination. Useful when you are choosing which market to expand into and how to staff it.

GTM Blueprint for Emerging Markets, Sachin Bhatia Exotel, Founder's Deep Dive E23

On SaaSBoomi by Sachin Bhatia ~60 min

The MOAT framework here is a genuinely useful way to decide between freemium, free trial and demo, and it is written for Indian founders selling globally rather than for a US audience.

The Why, What, and How of Product-Led Growth Strategy: A Cheat Sheet

From SaaSBoomi by Vishant Batta 18 min read

• Only about 2 percent of marketing qualified leads convert in a sales-led motion.
• Value metric rule: less usage should never cost more, more usage should never cost less.
• The MOAT framework picks a PLG strategy from market, ocean, acquisition method and time to value.
• Economic value analysis assumes you help the customer make 10x what they paid you.

The counterweight: the POSist co-founder on what to do when your product genuinely cannot be self-serve, including pricing onboarding and support as part of the product rather than giving them away.

AMA with Sakshi Tulsian: Growth strategies for your non-self-serve product

From SaaSBoomi by Shweta Mishra 12 min read

• POSist found inbound beat outbound in the Indian restaurant industry, at the lowest CAC.
• For every rockstar on her sales team, she hired at least seven people.
• $250k ACV can be sold remotely from India, but a $50k deal with non-tech buyers needs you in person.
• Resellers avoid complex solutions, so they only work once demand and brand already exist.
• POSist rewrote the software from scratch to serve enterprise, since value sits in the architecture.

Updates the PLG argument for products where AI does part of the onboarding, with the engagement loop and self-service enablement framing that Indian teams are building against right now.

Product-led Growth in an AI-driven SaaS Economy

From SaaSBoomi by SaaSBoomi Editorial Team 10 min read

• The martech landscape grew from about 150 companies in 2011 to about 11,038 in 2023.
• 53 percent of buyers would prefer to buy with no sales interaction at all.
• PLG is not product-manager-led growth, it needs sales, marketing, design and engineering together.
• Stripe moved toward PLG by adding no-code building in place of hands-on enterprise setup.

The Almabase founder on partnering with a billion dollar company as a small Indian startup and the win win win test he uses, which is the honest version of 'punching above your weight'.

Acing ABM, Customer Dev and Partnerships in the US

On SaaSBoomi by Kalyan Varma with Arvind Parthiban and Varun Shoor 50 min listen

Chargebee's customer success leader answering an Indian founder's question in the SaaSBoomi community. Eight points, starting with the one most Indian startups get wrong: treating CS as an extension of support.

Best Practices for Setting Customer Success in your SaaS start-up

From SaaSBoomi by Sri Maneru 8 min read

• A CS leader should fix data first, then processes, then people, in that order.
• Customer success is a proactive consulting role (adoption, QBRs, needs); support is reactive ticket work.
• Tag every exit as avoidable (low adoption) or unavoidable (wrong ICP, business shut down) before you act on it.
• Track onboarding turnaround time and percent of customers onboarded as leading indicators.

Written for Indian SaaS founders by the Everstage CEO, ex Freshworks. It gives the working numbers: quota period must be at least the sales cycle, quota to OTE around 5 to 6x, and two thirds of reps landing between 80 and 100 percent attainment.

Getting the Quotas Right for Your SaaS Sales Teams

From SaaSBoomi by Siva Rajamani 10 min read

• Target a 5:1 quota to OTE ratio; below 4:1 something is wrong (600K quota against 120K OTE).
• Ramp time equals sales cycle length plus training time, assuming the rep gets enough MQLs.
• Never set a quota period shorter than the sales cycle, so no monthly quotas on a 90 day cycle.
• About two thirds of reps should land in the 80 to 100 percent attainment band, otherwise the quota is wrong.
• Only worth doing past 1M ARR with product-market fit, and needs 12 months of funnel history.

77 percent of Indian SaaS leaders name ramping critical talent as their biggest challenge, and the piece quantifies how much the GTM talent pool has to grow. Useful context for why your hiring feels harder than the US blogs suggest.

India's Path to SaaS Leadership is Clear, but Challenges Remain

From SaaSBoomi 9 min read

• Indian SaaS is projected at 50 to 70 billion dollars and 4 to 6 percent of the global market by 2030, from about 1 percent today.
• Indian SaaS companies under 5M revenue grow around 50 percent a year versus 150 to 200 percent for global peers.
• Global leaders spend more than 3x as much on go-to-market and 90 percent more on customer success.
• 77 percent of Indian SaaS leaders name ramping critical talent as their biggest challenge, needing 3 to 6 times the current pool.

A short India-authored primer on the five metrics that matter early, plus a clean explanation of leading versus lagging indicators. Start here before the longer global guides.

SaaS Metrics

From SaaSBoomi by SaaSBoomi 6 min read

An Indian founder audience asking an Indian founder the questions a US podcast never asks, about pricing in dollars, hiring abroad and being taken seriously. Worth it for the room's questions as much as the answers.

SaaSBoomi Fireside chat with Ritesh Arora, co-founder and CEO of BrowserStack

On SaaSBoomi by SaaSBoomi 40 min

Indian founders comparing notes on launching in Southeast Asia, where technical maturity and buyer behaviour differ country by country, so you cannot treat the region as one ICP. SaaSBoomi blocks automated fetching, so open it in a browser.

Southeast Asia Expansion Playbook for Founders Looking to Launch a New Geo

From SaaSBoomi 12 min read

• Southeast Asia looks like India from outside, but every country differs and technical maturity is 4 to 5 years behind India.
• Settle your why before expanding, on a read of market readiness, target segment, competitors, and product maturity.

Names the specific Indian habit this hub exists to fix: leaning on sales headcount and human touch instead of product experience. Useful context for why PLG is rarer here than the global chatter suggests.

A SaaS Future with Product as the Epicentre

From SaaSBoomi by Matthew John 8 min read

• India has very few PLG practitioners; sales and support playbooks got the adoption instead.
• Indian SaaS habitually throws people at problems rather than solving them in the product.
• Frames PLG as a product that sells itself, moving the user forward without human touch points.
• The journey to redesign: research, minimum lovable product, 10 early adopters, 1000 true fans.

Indian founders comparing notes on hiring for grit and coachability over resumes, and on what it really costs to sell into the US from India. The on-ground detail you will not get from a US blog post.

How to Scale Efficiently: Strategies, Pitfalls, and Success Stories from SaaSBoomi's Playbook Roundtables

From SaaSBoomi 8 min read

• To build US sales capacity, put your team on the ground there for at least three months.
• Hire for grit and the ability to take feedback ahead of a polished resume.
• Point marketing at customer stories (case studies, webinars) rather than product features.
• Train with structured practice: listen to recorded calls, debrief them, repeat, instead of letting reps sell solo.

Ten hard rules from a Lightspeed India partner on selling into the US from India, including the happy ears trap and the above versus below the line buyer distinction that wrecks Indian pipelines.

The do's and don'ts of cross-border GTM

From SaaSBoomi by Dev Khare 9 min read

• Sell above the line (CTO, CIO, CEO, CRO), the people who own the 3 to 5 year strategy, not execution staff.
• Watch for the IT hamster wheel: contacts who keep requesting demos and PoCs but hold no buying power.
• A paid PoC separates serious buyers from tourists; a free one is only worth it if it buys you access to power.
• Do not build on the build-x-more-features-and-we-will-buy promise, and cut through happy ears.