Manav Garg built Eka Software selling commodity trading software to global enterprises, then co-founded SaaSBoomi and Together Fund, and he refuses to let Indian founders treat location as an excuse. His line is that if you are an India based company you should be more profitable than a US based company, because operational efficiency is a structural advantage you already have and should be converting into margin. On how you actually win the deal, he is equally blunt: people buy from people, and early Indian SaaS founders had a credibility problem because without a data backed precedent nobody will believe you, so he cold called global buyers and got on planes. His own edge was domain fluency from years as a coffee trader, and he puts it simply, that people liked him because he could speak their language. The deals were not small: Eka's first five customers were roughly 70,000 to 100,000 dollars each, Noble Group was an early million dollar contract, and revenue reached 34 million dollars by 2014.
3 hand-picked resources, 2 India-specific, 3 link-checked. Pick how you want to dig in.
Why we picked it The zero to one half of the story, focused on the hiring and fundraising decisions that came before Eka could sell million dollar contracts abroad.
On The Startup Operator by Manav Garg Interview
Why we picked it Where the profitability argument and the people buy from people line come from, along with his honest read on why Indian SaaS takes longer to reach 100 million in ARR.
On The Neon Show by Manav Garg 93 min
Open neon.fund →Why we picked it The concrete deal sizes behind the theory, and the clearest illustration of domain fluency as a moat: he could speak commodity traders' language because he had been one.
On The Founder Thesis Podcast by Manav Garg Long-form interview
Open founderthesis.com →How how great operators think reads from a different seat.
