Article · 25 min read

The Rough Guide to Building an Enterprise SaaS Dhandha in India

Blume Ventures (with Aakrit Vaish, Haptik) · Blume Ventures Free Intermediate India

The global playbooks assume a US-style buying process; this one is written for the Indian enterprise reality, where the sale turns less on whether your category makes sense and more on whether you personally are trustworthy, which is precisely why founder-led sales runs longer here. It is blunt on sequencing that matches our answer: founders can carry sales to around 100 customers, your first hire is a strong AE (not a VP of Sales), and getting in the door still runs on warm intros, conference hustle, and mutual connections rather than cold outbound. Built from operators like Aakrit Vaish of Haptik, so the advice is field-tested in Indian enterprise deals.

  • In India, enterprise buying is trust-first, so founder-led selling justifiably runs longer (roughly to your first ~100 customers) before you hand off
  • Your first sales hire is a strong account executive who rides shotgun on your meetings, not a VP of Sales hired to build a team from scratch
  • Pipeline in India comes from mutual connections, industry conferences, and hustle for time, not the US cold-outbound motion
Open on blume.vc ↗

It answers 7 questions

  1. I'm building for Indian SMBs who use WhatsApp for everything. How do I get my first 10 without a fancy sales process?
  2. Should I hire a salesperson yet, or keep selling founder-led until I hit a certain revenue?
  3. What are the biggest mistakes founders make trying to land their first customers that I should avoid?
  4. How do I sell into a big Indian corporate or bank when they expect vendors to be large, established, and often to pay for access?
  5. My total market looks small, but each customer is worth a lot. Can a low-count, high-value market still work?
  6. How do I get and use customer references, case studies, and logos before I have famous customers?
  7. When should I move from selling one deal at a time to building a repeatable, scalable sales motion?

Read with it

  1. The single best thing ever written on customer conversations. It teaches you to ask about the customer's life and past... momtestbook.com Book · ~130 pages The Mom Test Rob Fitzpatrick
  2. The permission slip to recruit users by hand, do things manually, and deliver 'insanely great' experiences to your first few... paulgraham.com Essay · ~15 min read Do Things That Don't Scale Paul Graham
  3. The essay that put 'product-market fit' into the startup vocabulary. Read it for the gut-level description of what PMF feels... pmarchive.com Essay · ~15 min read The Only Thing That Matters Marc Andreessen
  4. A tactical follow-on covering the channels and motions top B2B startups scale after the first ten. Grounds distribution... Lenny's Newsletter Article · ~15 min read How to win your first 10 B2B customers Lenny Rachitsky
  5. Video · ~25 min How to Talk to Users Eric Migicovsky
  6. This is the honest, founder-written version of what selling to Indian SMBs actually looks like: high-touch, relationship-first,... Blume Ventures Article Selling Smart: The Insider's Guide to SaaS Success in India Blume Ventures
eChai Partner Brands The partnership →