Podcast · 80 min listen

7 Myths About Selling B2B SaaS In India ft Unicommerce Founder Kapil Makhija

Siddhartha Ahluwalia with Kapil Makhija · The Neon Show Free Intermediate India

7 Myths About Selling B2B SaaS In India ft Unicommerce Founder Kapil Makhija

Kapil built one of India's few listed SaaS companies, so when he takes apart the myths (Indians will not pay for software, they demand endless customisation, they want enterprise support at SMB prices) he is arguing from a P&L. Essential if you are deciding whether India is a real market for you.

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It answers 11 questions

  1. I have never sent a cold email in my life. Where do I even start?
  2. How do I know whether my product can even work self-serve?
  3. Should I price in rupees for India and dollars for everyone else?
  4. Should we sell to Indian SMBs, Indian enterprises, or skip India and go straight at US buyers?
  5. How do the best teams sell into large Indian and global enterprises where procurement runs the show?
  6. The person who uses our product every day is not the person who pays for it. Which one is the ICP?
  7. We are bootstrapped with no money for marketing. What does GTM look like without a budget?
  8. Our CRM says we lose on price. I do not believe it. How do I find the real reason, and what does it say about who we should be selling to?
  9. Procurement has entered the conversation and wants thirty percent off. How do I negotiate without gutting the deal?
  10. Inbound has dried up. Leads are down two quarters running and nobody knows why. What do I do?
  11. We are in India selling to global users. How do the best Indian companies onboard buyers who are asleep when we are awake?

Read with it

  1. Concrete on the mechanics nobody outside India writes about: INR pricing, UPI AutoPay recurring success rates versus... productgrowth.in Article · ~12 min read SaaS Pricing in India: The Rupee vs Dollar Dilemma productgrowth.in
  2. The pragmatic case for pricing so discounts are survivable instead of pretending you will hold the line: mark up by around 20... SaaStr Article · short read The Confounding Logic of Discounting Jason Lemkin
  3. This is where the SDR and AE split came from, and the summary gives you the whole model without the book. The rule that no AE... Predictable Revenue Article · ~15 min read 15-Minute Summary of Predictable Revenue Aaron Ross
  4. Podcast · ~60 min GTM Blueprint for Emerging Markets, Sachin Bhatia Exotel, Founder's Deep Dive E23 Sachin Bhatia
  5. Zenoti and MindTickle founders on validating at home before expanding, and on finding a handful of customers willing to build... SeedToScale (Accel India) Article · ~12 min read Entering a New Market as a SaaS Business and Finding First Customers Ajay Sethi
  6. Splits the ecosystem into India-first companies serving the domestic market and global-first companies exporting, which is... Bessemer Venture Partners Report · Long report The Rise of SaaS in India 2023 Bessemer Venture Partners
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