StartupTalky

Tag: Saas Business

  • What Does a Non-tech Person Need to Know Before Buying a SaaS Startup?

    Technologies have changed dramatically. It has become a lot easier for small businesses to generate revenue online. As you may know, many startups are trying to make it big in the industry. But buyers need to be careful about which platform they invest in. Some people aren’t tech-savvy but want to own a SaaS startup. If that’s you and you don’t know how to choose the right one, then you can use some tips to find a reliable startup. This will keep disappointment to a minimum and save you time when screening and vetting SaaS startups before making an offer.

    Things to Know Before Buying a SaaS Startup

    How to Buy a SaaS Startup?

    Know what you’re getting into (purchasing a product or a company)

    Global SaaS Market Worth
    Global SaaS Market Worth

    When buying a SaaS startup, it’s important to understand whether you’re buying a product or a company—and how those two things differ in terms of risk and rewards. If your goal is to sell your product as quickly as possible, then buying an established company with paying customers and recurring revenue might be more appealing than starting from scratch with an untested idea. However, if you want to buy into someone else’s vision and grow with them over time—or if you want to change direction quickly based on market conditions—then building something from scratch might be better suited for your needs.

    How is the product built?

    The SaaS startup you’re looking at has a great team. But how do they build their product? If they’re using a proprietary software platform, that’s great. If they’re building their in-house software, that’s even better! It means they do not depend on third parties to keep their business running.

    If they’ve built their product using open source tools or frameworks, that’s fine too, but make sure you understand what it means for them to have done so.

    Are there any dependencies on third-party services or software licenses?

    If you’re buying a SaaS startup, it’s not enough to just look at their revenue numbers. You also need to know if they’re making money and how much they spend on it.

    Are there any dependencies on third-party services or software licenses? For example, buying a SaaS business that relies heavily on Amazon Web Services (AWS) might seem like a great deal on paper, but you might be surprised by how much it costs to maintain the infrastructure in the long run.

    Have they built their technology, or did they buy existing solutions?

    This is another important question because it can tell you if your new startup has already invested in building its technology stack, which means it may have already started paying off dividends.

    How does the product work?

    SaaS Product Working
    SaaS Product Working

    SaaS businesses have many moving parts, so it can be hard to understand what’s going on from the outside. It does not take an expert in software development to know how your SaaS company works—you just need a basic understanding of what makes it tick.

    Before buying a SaaS product, the first thing to understand is how the product works—and whether it’s working. You should know what the company has done with its resources in the past.

    Learn how to value a SaaS business

    You may have a hard time figuring out what a SaaS business is worth if you’re not a tech person. You’re probably wondering how to value a SaaS startup or how to know if the numbers are genuine.

    It’s easy! Just ask yourself:

    • How much money has a startup made in its lifetime?
    • How much money can it make in the future?
    • What are the costs of running the business?

    Understand their business model

    What is it that they do? Do they charge per user? Do they sell subscriptions? Is it based on the number of transactions or the amount of data stored? These are all important questions to ask because they will inform how long your investment will last and how much money you can expect to make from it.

    Next, take a look at their competitors. Who are they competing against? Are they trying to compete with big players like Google or Microsoft? Or do they have an opportunity to carve out their niche where they won’t be competing directly with anyone else? Taking this into account, you will know exactly how much room there is for growth and expansion within that particular space.

    Plan for a lot of work ahead

    Once you’ve found the right SaaS startup, you’ll need to plan for a lot of work ahead. You might have to hire new staff or train your current employees to use the product, which can be costly. Also, consider the time it will take to train your customers on how to use the product—this can be even more time-consuming than training your staff!

    Make sure the product is fit for its purpose

    What does this mean? It means that you need to ensure that your SaaS startup will be able to deliver what you need it to and that it will not have any issues along the way. You also need to ensure that your SaaS startup will be able to keep up with demand and won’t have any issues scaling up when necessary.

    Be prepared to develop a marketing strategy

    When buying a SaaS startup, you need to be prepared to develop a marketing strategy.

    Your first step is to understand how your target customer uses the product. What are their pain points? How do they currently solve them? What do they want to see improved? Then you can start developing your marketing plan around those goals.

    As a non-tech person, you may not know about SEO or SEM yet—but that’s okay! You can still have a say in what the marketing looks like and what channels are used for outreach.

    Don’t assume that the numbers are true

    One of the biggest mistakes that people new to SaaS make is assuming they can trust the financials provided by the company they’re buying. Most SaaS startups are private companies, so there’s no way for outsiders to verify those numbers—and even if there were an outside auditor, those auditors might not have experience with this type of business model, so they wouldn’t be able to tell if everything was on the up-and-up anyway!

    Talk to at least three existing customers

    Before investing in a SaaS startup, we recommend talking with at least three existing customers. When you do this, make sure they are people who are using the product in real life and not just company employees or investors—that way, you’ll get a more accurate picture of what using the product is really like.

    Inquire about their experiences with the product & company and what they like/dislike about it. Also, ask them what they would change about it if they could (though remember: this doesn’t necessarily mean that the startup will change their product based on your feedback).

    If any features are missing from the product that they think would be useful, ask them how important those features are to them personally—not just in terms of how often they use them but also how much value they would add to their business if added to the product overall.

    Inspect their revenue

    Indian SaaS Industry Expected Growth till 2026
    Indian SaaS Industry Expected Growth till 2026

    Revenue is the most important thing to look for. Revenue is the biggest indicator of how well a SaaS startup is doing. If you’re buying it, you want to ensure that it’s making money and has been making money in the past. If it hasn’t been making money, it might be time to move on from that company.

    Look for revenue growth and revenue stability

    What does this mean? It means you want to see if the company has consistently made money for the past few years. If they’ve been doing well over the past 4 or 5 years, that’s great! But if not, ask yourself why.

    You want to see steady growth over time—preferably, that growth has been accelerating. In addition to growth, you also want to see that the company is making money. The goal is not just to grow as fast as possible; it’s also to make sure that the business model works and can be sustained long-term.

    Conclusion

    Buyers, beware, SaaS startups can be complicated to evaluate and run.

    Frankly, there is a lot to look into when you’re looking at buying a SaaS startup. There are products to demo, contracts to review and establish, and many other details that probably won’t occur unless you’ve worked with SaaS products before. But if you want a great return on your investment, you need to be aware of all these factors (and more) before buying into a SaaS startup.

    FAQs

    Why do startups acquire other startups?

    Acquiring a startup helps in getting more market share in startup the companies are dealing in.

    How to value a SAAS startup?

    Saas startup is valued based on these values:

    • Annual Recurring Revenue
    • Growth Rate
    • Net Revenue Retention
    • Gross Margin

    Can a non-technical person be a founder of a company?

    Yes, there are many successful startups that were built by non-technical founders.

    Is there any marketplace to buy SAAS Startups?

    Marketplace to check for buying SAAS startups are:

    • FE International
    • Quiet Light Brokerage
    • MicroAcquire

  • Pabbly Connect – Now Seamlessly Integrate Your Tools

    Businesses are always in search of easier integration and better operations. By creating a smooth workflow and setting up the automation between software such as marketing tools and payment gateways, businesses can boost productivity and focus on important tasks.

    That’s when Pabbly Connect can come in handy. Pabbly Connect is a  great time-saver tool with absolutely no coding required to set up workflows and integration between the apps.

    But how does Pabbly connect work to create workflows between different tools and platforms? In this article, we have shared the working of Pabbly Connect and the types of Pabbly integration.

    What is Pabbly Connect?
    Pabbly Connect glossaries
    How does Pabbly Connect work?
    Setting up a webhook integration in Pabbly Connect
    How to use Filter in Pabbly Connect?
    What Apps Does Pabbly Connect Integrate With?

    What is Pabbly Connect?

    Pabbly Connect is an automation tool that connects two or more apps together and helps in automating the data transfer between these apps by creating the workflows.

    Using Pabbly connect, you can seamlessly transfer the data between your favourite software, SaaS tools and services without making manual efforts. Pabbly Connect helps you connect a wide range of applications together to create streamlined workflows.

    Pabbly Connect Glossaries

    Before we explain to you the working of Pabbly Connect, there are a few terms related to it that a user needs to know.

    Trigger: Trigger is the main application through which the data transfer takes place.

    Action: An action is a step where you need to add the other apps to which you want to transfer data and perform an action from that app.

    Tasks: Any action performed inside the workflow is called a task. Note that triggers are not calculated as the task. A task is considered when an action takes place in the workflow.

    Operations: Once you have set up the automation, a new check is performed after a fixed time to see if there is any new data. If there are checks after every 5 minutes, the total operations in a day would be 288. That’s why Pabbly Connect offers unlimited operations.

    Workflow: A workflow is a combination of a trigger and action steps. It may have more than one action. There are unlimited workflows but you may be charged for the actions.

    Iterator: The iterator divides various data into different variables one by one until the last value is reached. These values are passed from one action step to another if an iterator is added.

    How Does Pabbly Connect Work?

    Pabbly Connect is a cloud-based application that does not need any downloads. You can sign up and get started with a free version. The free version of Pabbly Connect offers unlimited workflows and unlimited operations so that you can create the internal workflows instantly.

    Pabbly Connect workflow is usually a 2 or 3-step process.

    The two steps are namely:

    • Trigger (If something happens)
    • Action (Do this when…)

    You can add as many action steps below depending on which apps you want to transfer the data. Besides this, you can also add filters, iterators and routers in the action step.

    Pabbly Connect gives two integration opinions; webhook and API module integration.

    With the webhook, you can connect to over 800+ third-party apps. These are the apps with which Pabbly provides direct integration. However, you will need to follow some steps to connect the trigger app to perform an action. Different trigger apps require different steps to capture webhook responses and create a workflow.

    Setting up a Webhook Integration in Pabbly Connect

    Trigger

    This is the first step to creating workflows in Pabbly. The trigger will send the data to the action step when an event occurs in the triggering app.

    Choose the app that you want to set up as a triggering app. Add the filter ‘Triggering event’ when you want Pabbly to perform the action.

    For example, if you wish to perform the action only when a new Facebook lead is generated, you can choose the trigger app as ‘Facebook’ and the Trigger event as ‘new lead’.

    Adding Facebook Lead
    Adding Facebook Lead

    While some apps may require you to perform a few steps through the external apps to capture the webhook response, some triggering conditions or apps do not require any steps to capture the response.

    Here are some examples of Triggers:

    • When a customer purchases something from PayPal.
    • When someone submits a form on Pabbly form builder of another form builder that you chose.
    • When a new user books an appointment.

    Actions

    An action is performed when the required event occurs inside the trigger app. By choosing the application and what action you want this app to perform, you can integrate these two apps together.

    Adding a subscriber using Discord
    Adding a subscriber using Discord

    A filter tells the data that type of data you wish to send.

    Here are a few examples of actions inside the Pabbly Connect workflow:

    • Add the new lead to the email list inside MailChimp
    • Share files through Dropbox
    • Set up welcome SMS through Twilio

    You can also set the conditional filters to perform the task only when a specific action occurs.

    Let’s consider an example where a user wants to add a new contact to the email list when a new charge occurs through Stripe.

    Step 1: Choose the trigger app ‘Stripe’ and select the trigger event as ‘New Charge.

    Creating trigger event using Stripe
    Creating trigger event using Stripe

    Step 2: Go to Stripe’s webhook settings section and add the new endpoint by clicking on ‘Add endpoints’.

    Step 3: Copy the webhook URL and paste it into the endpoint box. Also, choose the ‘charge. succeeded’ as the events to send responses.

    Adding Webhook
    Adding Webhook

    Step 4: After adding the endpoint, click on the ‘Capture Webhook Response’ button to connect Stripe with Pabbly Connect.

    For this, you need to make a test payment.

    Step 5: Make a test payment through Stripe by selecting the email, name, currency and adding a new customer.

    Adding a new payment and customer
    Adding a new payment and customer

    Step 6: After adding all the required information, click on Submit payment to perform a test payment.

    Submitting Payment
    Submitting Payment

    Step 7: Once you have made the payment, your trigger app will be connected to Pabbly Connect.

    Step 8: Next, connect the action app with your Pabbly Connect account by choosing the app that you wish to integrate.

    For instance, select MailChimp as the action app and choose the action to perform.

    Selecting the action app - MailChimp
    Selecting the action app – MailChimp

    Step 9: Once you click on Connect, you will be asked to integrate the API keys from the action apps to Pabbly Connect. Follow the steps as mentioned.

    Adding a new connection in MailChimp
    Adding a new connection in MailChimp

    On clicking ‘Save’, your action app will be integrated with the trigger app. Thus, a new workflow will be created between these two apps.

    You can further add more action steps if you wish to transfer data from this second platform to the third one.

    You can add as many action steps by clicking the ‘+’ button. Choose the application to connect and the event for which you want to perform the action.  

    Selecting the action app - Agile CRM
    Selecting the action app – Agile CRM

    What makes Pabbly Connect easy to use is that it gives a step by step guide on how to connect the specific apps to the workflow.

    Different actions and events may require different steps to perform and connect these apps. But, the basic idea behind the workflow creation is to smoothly transfer the data between these apps and reduce the time and effort.

    Another method of integrating these apps is via the API module.

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    How to Use Filter In Pabbly Connect?

    Filters can be used in the action step to perform an action only if a specific field in the platform is selected.

    Let’s say, you wish to gather data from a specific gender using your form. Once you’ve selected the trigger app as any form builder, connect it to the Pabbly Connect and then add action as ‘Filter’.

    Select the Filter field as ‘Gender’ and choose ‘equal to’ from the drop-down. Enter the value as ‘female’ or ‘male’ whichever you want to capture.

    You can connect the trigger app like form builder with an action app such as Google sheet to collect only the responses from a specified gender. Thus, Pabbly Connect can also streamline your task of filtering the conditions.

    What Apps Does Pabbly Connect Integrate With?

    Pabbly Connect offers integrations with over 800 different apps. Pabbly Connect seamlessly integrates with apps including:

    • Marketing
    • CRM
    • E-Commerce
    • Helpdesk
    • Payments
    • Web forms
    • Collaboration

    These include apps such as 123 form builder, Agile CRM, HubSpot, Zendesk, Stripe, PayPal, Slack, Ninja Forms and many others. Check out the full list of integrations here.

    Conclusion

    Pabbly Connect is an amazing workflow creation software that helps you integrate various apps together and enable you to perform actions. In fact, it is one of the best Zapier alternatives at present.

    What makes it better than Zapier is that it allows unlimited operations and allows actions as a task. This makes it more affordable than Zapier. Plus, setting up the trigger and action is fairly easy since you get the step by step guidance on how to set up the action.

    Above all, Pabbly Connect offers 100s of helpful guides and video tutorials to help you understand how the integration works. You can sign up and start with Pabbly for free and perform 3x workflows as compared to other similar apps!

    FAQs

    What does Pabbly Connect do?

    Pbbly connect lets you integrate 800 plus tools and helps you streamline your workflow.

    How much does Pabbly cost?

    The basic plan of Pabbly Connect starts at $10/month and goes upto $40/month

    Is Pabbly Connect Free?

    No, but Pabbly Connect provides unlimited workflows, operations and 100 tasks per month for free.

  • 5 Biggest Sales Challenges in Selling SaaS and How to Overcome Them

    Software as a service, commonly abbreviated as SaaS, is a type of software that is hosted by a software company or single provider. It permits its customers to connect to and use apps based on the exclusive cloud-based feature over the internet.

    The customer need not need to worry about the storage. The software is backed up by the product engineers of the providers. The customer success team looks after the management of the software.

    SaaS sales can be understood as the process of selling web-based software that is accessible by the customers through an online portal. SaaS sales products help solve business-related issues.

    SaaS sales are regulated by the following sales representatives- Sales Development Representatives (SDRs) and Business Development Managers (BDMs). The former focuses on the outbound sales and qualifying leads, and the latter works on conducting product demos and closing deals respectively. Here is a list of a few most common challenges faced by SaaS founders that they face when selling SaaS, along with suggestions on how to overcome them.

    1. Qualified and Unqualified Leads
    2. Stressful SaaS Sales Cycle
    3. Choosing the Right SaaS Sales Model
    4. Conversion from Freemium to Premium
    5. Too Many Competitors

    Importance of SaaS Sales Strategy

    Like all B2B sales, the prime objective of the SaaS sales team is to generate qualified leads and revenue for the company.

    Planning gives an idea about what we are up to and paves the direction for us. Therefore, a strategized sales technique must be adopted. The decision of the SaaS sales strategy depends on the company’s SaaS adoption and development.

    The SaaS sales strategy includes various sales techniques to fulfil two-fold objectives i.e., upselling clients and closing deals.

    A SaaS Sales strategy plays a vital role in the success of the company as it focuses on the growth of the company and its position in the market, in the longer run. The SaaS sales strategy most commonly uses the subscription-based pricing model. While creating the strategy the team must focus on the following points:

    • Lead generation to turn interested into sales.
    • Focus on the target group of the market and convert prospects into consumers by introducing them to the company and its offerings.
    • The final stage of the transaction includes the agreements signed between the company and the customers thereby, resulting in sales.

    This simple 3-step transaction has to face a lot during the implementation phase.

    1. Qualified and Unqualified Leads

    Lead generation
    Lead Generation

    Lead generation gives happiness. But the same end up in tears if it does not give you a sale in return. Therefore, it is necessary to make sure that you do not waste time on unqualified leads.

    Categorization of your leads into qualified and unqualified must be followed after lead generation as not all leads require an equal amount of attention. Contacting all leads will result in a waste of time and leave you exhausted.

    Here, the team needs to come up with a strategy so that more time and focus can be given to the most important leads. This distinction could be made by a little survey through an interesting and engaging questionnaire in a Google form or measuring their quality through a lead scoring formula.

    Preparing a lead scoring model that fits your business model is a good idea. It helps to focus and save time on the most important inbound leads. It can also prepare you for future dealings with bigger opportunities yet to come in the future. The lead scoring formula gives amazing results when comes to filtering the potential customers from the free trial users who are never planning to convert.

    2. Stressful SaaS Sales Cycle

    SaaS sales cycle
    SaaS Sales Cycle

    SaaS sales cycles vary from product to product. Each sales cycle depends on various factors such as the target market, the pricing model, or even the target audience.

    It might involve dealing with unrealistic expectations at times, which creates pressure on the sales team. The only solution to this problem is- Benchmarking. It helps you get started as you have a goal set to achieve. Once the benchmark is reached, it’s no more an issue. The next step is to align the results with the expectations.

    The team should set a benchmark to predict the average sales cycle based on industry, pricing, and customers’ needs.

    3. Choosing the Right SaaS Sales Model

    Sales models play a vital role in the success journey. However, picking one isn’t as simple as it may seem. Your decision directly impacts the growth and revenue. Therefore, all the SaaS sales model options available must be reviewed thoroughly. Further, there should be a test to find the most suitable one in a limited time.

    Finally, it can be rolled out if successful. Otherwise, there should be a re-test if your sales model lacks at any point for your SaaS product.

    4. Conversion from Freemium to Premium

    This one can be regarded as the biggest challenge for every SaaS business that wants to grow.

    Many of the generated leads are of the view that they would enjoy the free trial and switch to the other SaaS product’s free trial once the previous one gets over, without paying for the product in the end.

    It’s good to know that all the free trial users cannot be convinced to pay. But at the same time, you need to pay attention to those who are showing interest in your SaaS product in a different way as compared to others. They could be the ones who would like to continue.

    That is the point where you need to create an engagement and keep those warmest leads engaged throughout the trial period. You need to set up a strategy for how you approach them.

    You need to make them well versed with the benefits and further exclusive features eagerly waiting for your customers once their free trial ends. You should let them know how that your product is important to them as they are to you.

    You must try to find out more about them and try not to overwhelm them. Take them into trust with your pocket-friendly policy and other benefits by the time they get ready to retain with you.

    5. Too Many Options to Choose From

    Too Many Options
    Too Many Options

    New SaaS products pop up like crazy. Having competition is good – it increases the value of the market.

    When a customer is looking for that one product that satisfies exactly what he wants, he faces too many options. The customer gets confused about which SaaS product to choose from when several options are presented before them.

    To make your product the most obvious and preferable choice out of many alternatives, you must think like a customer. You need to figure out the ways to stand out in the heavily crowded market.

    You need to highlight the most exclusive feature that compels your customer to opt for your offering, over the other options available to them at the same time.

    While presenting your product, you need to explain its value, how is it different from the other offerings, and how it benefits your customer.

    Your website must be customer-friendly. It must be a little more informative than your competitors; fill it with the past experiences of you and your present and current customers. The content must be such that it helps customers make more informed decisions.

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    Conclusion

    Every SaaS business faces sales challenges. Sales is not an easy task, we need to earn it. There is a solution to all the challenges. Whether it’s the lack of time to qualify all the leads, a longer sales cycle, or dealing with a saturated market. The only thing we need to do is to figure out the right strategy and find the best possible solution to get the SaaS product in front of customers.

    FAQs

    What are sales biggest challenges in selling SaaS?

    The customer is faced with too many options, converting a customer from a free trial to a paid customer, choosing the right sales model, and qualified and unqualified leads.

    Is it hard to sell SaaS?

    Yes, selling a SaaS product is not easy as there are already other companies trying to convert customers into paid customers so it is important to make your product stand out and provide the best customer service.

    Why is SaaS so profitable?

    SaaS businesses are profitable as it is a recurring model where you are already earning revenue from recurring customers as well as from new customers.

  • Kovai.co – Multi-Product Enterprise SAAS Startup for All Business Needs

    The effects of global pandemic has significant impact on several industries including the technology and software sector. But, it did not slow down growth in the software sector. The growth of enterprise software and SAAS products has been quite good. The expenditure of Information Technology on enterprise software is estimated to reach 672 billion USD in 2022. The Enterprise Software Market is forecast to reach $545m by 2025. SaaS products and enterprise software have become essential in a cutthroat business environment. They provide accessibility, functionality, scalability, and versatility to businesses. Kovai.co is a multi-product company that has a global reach in more than 70 countries. Read to know about Kovai.co products, founders, business model, marketing, and the complete journey of its growth.

    Kovai.co – Company Highlights

    Startup Name Kovai.co
    Headquarters London
    Industry Enterprise Software & SaaS
    Founder Saravana Kumar
    Founded 2011
    Website kovai.co

    Kovai.co – About
    Kovai.co – Founder and Team
    Kovai.co – The Idea and Startup Story
    Kovai.co – Name, Tagline, and Logo
    Kovai.co – Products
    Kovai.co – Business Model and Revenue Model
    Kovai.co – Customer Acquisition
    Kovai.co – Challenges Faced
    Kovai.co – Marketing
    Kovai.co – Growth
    Kovai.co – Acquisitions
    Kovai.co – Competitors
    Kovai.co – Tools Used to Run The Startups
    Kovai.co – Recognition and Achievements

    Kovai.co – About

    Kovai.co is a bootstrapped & profitable multi-product enterprise SaaS company specializing in enterprise integration and knowledge management space based out of Coimbatore, India and London, UK. Kovai.co is a technology partner of choice for many of the world’s leading enterprises to manage and monitor their Microsoft BizTalk and Azure Serverless environments. Kovai.co’s product team consists of thinkers and innovators who are re-defining the way robust Enterprise Software and SaaS products are built.

    Their mission is to create a successful global technology product company out of their home city – Coimbatore. Their vision is to be a SaaS Unicorn within 2030.

    The core value of the company is #TogetherWeGrow. They identify necessities and create opportunities. Enjoy their growth in all aspects and continue the journey to scale.

    Kovai.co – Founder and Team

    Saravana Kumar is the sole founder of Kovai.co ably supported by a leadership team of experts from various domains. The current team size is 240+. They coach and empower people thereby enhancing their performance. They are against command and control. All their leaders are friendly and approachable. They believe in doing the tasks first, get mature, then delegating, and elevate.

    Kovai.co has its offices in London, UK and Coimbatore, India. Saravana Kumar is born and brought up in Coimbatore. He chose to give back to his hometown through his contributions on economic and skills upliftment. Kovai.co under his dynamic leadership has grown organically from a single product to multi product company with over 240 employees majority of them based out of Coimbatore. The company is bootstrapped and has crossed $10 MN ARR in 2020.

    Kovai.co gives opportunities to freshers and expats who wish to come back closer to their hometown. For freshers there is a Kovai.co Connect initiative where in students from different educational institutions are hired as interns and given in-depth classroom & on the job training for a period of 6 months after which they are taken on rolls as full-time employees. Over the last two years the company has trained nearly 100 students under this initiative.

    Kovai.co – The Idea and Startup Story

    Saravana Kumar, Founder & CEO, Kovai.co was a Microsoft BizTalk Server Consultant for 10 years and during that time of building solutions for all their clients, he noticed there were some gaps in the BizTalk Server. He started off by building a solution to fill these gaps more as a passion in the year 2010. He presented the first version of the product to his peers at the MVP conference in the US and received very positive feedback. With the kind of positive feedback, he realized the importance of this solution in the commercial sense and decided to launch as a business. Within the first 2 months he was able to get his first customer all the way from Hongkong with whom he did not have any prior connection. Within the first three years of the launch, he was able to get about 150 customers and hence decided to go into the business full time & hire a team. Until the first three years he was running the company with a small 4-member team from the living room of his residence.

    As the product started to grow both technically and commercially, he built & launched their second product Serverless 360 for managing the Azure platform in the year 2016.

    Sometime in the year 2017 when the team was looking for a knowledge base solution to write and organize all their technical product documentation, they realized that there was not any suitable solution in the market to fit their needs and the ones that were there was very expensive. Thus, Saravana brainstormed with the team and decided to build a solution to solve this business problem there by launching their knowledge base solution Document360 in the year 2018.

    Document360 is a knowledge base platform that is engineered for growing companies. It helps companies to instantly create an online self-service knowledge base for their customers or employees accessed either publicly or privately.

    When the company was growing organically and the opportunity came to set up an engineering & marketing development center in India, back in 2013, Saravana ignored all the counsel from his peers to set up the facility in Bengaluru, Chennai or Hyderabad and started the office in Coimbatore.

    The town Coimbatore was called Kovanputhur (pre independence days) with a shorter version called Kovai. The use of the word Kovai for Coimbatore is still in existence, and it has an emotional attachment to people of Coimbatore.

    Hence when Saravana started the company, he registered the company name as “Kovai Limited” in the UK (in 2009) and “Kovai Systems India Pvt Limited” in India (in 2013). Even though the registered names were Kovai, the company was known as BizTalk360 (the first product) for a long time.

    When the company was going through the re-branding exercise after evolving into a multi-product company, they decided to bring Kovai as the prominent brand name.

    In 2018, they called the company Kovai.co.

    In 2020, with continuous persistence, they managed to acquire the domain Kovai.com owned by its previous owner for nearly 20 years.

    Their mission is to create a successful global technology product company out of their home city – Coimbatore.”

    Kovai.co – Products

    Kovai.co is a multi-product company with 4 different products and over 2000 customers spread across globally in more than 70 countries.

    BizTalk360

    BizTalk360 bundles over 50+ features into one single solution to make BizTalk server monitoring and administration super-efficient and secure. BizTalk360 provides everything enterprises need for BizTalk operations, monitoring, analytics, and more. Operations dashboards, widgets, advanced event viewer, data monitoring dashboards, notification channels, and throttling analyser and new relic integration are some of the features of BizTalk360.

    Serverless360

    Serverless360 is a portal focused on Operations and Support for Microsoft Azure Serverless resources, a Complementary tool to Azure portal in supporting Azure Serverless Application. Enterprises can better manager their business applications through Serverless360 and do end to end tracking on the message flowing through the Serverless Resources, and more.

    Document360

    Document360 is a Knowledge Base platform, engineered for growing companies. Businesses can instantly create an online Self-service knowledge base for your customer & employees (accessed either publicly or privately).

    Cerebrata

    Cerebrata Cerulean provides out of box support for a number of commonly used Azure services. It also provides deep integration with Azure Portal and Azure Cloud Shell to manage other Azure services.

    Kovai.co – Business Model and Revenue Model

    The business model of Kovai.co differs for each of their products based on its respective target audience. For instance any company with BizTalk server are their potential targets.

    For Serverless360, that target is vast – Anyone with Azure resources in their integration platform, can use this application.

    For Document360, this is also a vast adoption platform and basically anyone who needs documentation in SaaS or in On premise model is their target audience.

    Kovai.co – Customer Acquisition

    The first activity they undertook once they got a prototype of the product was to reach out to all their connections (experts from technical writing community, CXOs of companies etc) requesting them to try out the product and share their valuable feedback. The feedback received were evaluated, prioritized, and then passed on to the engineering team for development. Their marketing teams had begun writing blogs on showcasing the use cases of the product thereby generating prospective leads from readers. The sales team would then showcase demos of the product to these prospects and encourage them to take a trial of the product so that they can use it firsthand to understand the value it creates. They were frugal in their approach as they did not want to spend too much money and resources until the first 100 customers were acquired.

    Kovai.co – Challenges Faced

    In any business typically challenges are with people, like core people leaving at wrong times, wrong hires, people you trusted leave and they take away a few of your core members etc. These challenges will continue to remain and it’s the passion the founder has for building products and solving business user problems that drives the startup forward. Its also has the ability to impact so many people’s lives and create something big in the community, especially in Coimbatore which is a tier two city & the founders’ hometown. Moreover, challenges are never permanent. Any adversity that comes your way will subside over time. They have lost some crucial members at critical moments, but if they look back, it’s a short-term pain. There will be struggle for a while but eventually things will turnaround.

    Kovai.co – Marketing

    Content marketing has been the most successful marketing campaign. They write some high quality blogs focusing on multiple use cases of their product and enable their audience to clearly understand the value they will get out of the Kovai.co products.

    Kovai.co – Growth

    The last two years (2020 & 2021) has been a moment of many milestones for us.

    • Kovai.co hired over 175 people during this period
    • They made the first acquisition with Cerebrata in 2020
    • They crossed $10M in ARR in 2020
    • Document360 acquired over 500 customers in a year
    • In 2021 they have focussed on growing their products to the next level in terms of new features, enhancements, acquiring new customers, etc. They also put together a separate team & started working on a new product which will be launched in Q2 of 2022.

    Their medium-term plan is to generate a $30M ARR within the next 3 years and their long-term plan is to be a SaaS Unicorn by 2030.

    Kovai.co – Acquisitions

    Kovai.co acquired Cerebrata in the year 2020.

    Kovai.co – Competitors

    Their enterprise products BizTalk360 & Serverless360 do not really have any prominent competitors.

    The competitors for Document360 are:

    • Bloomfire
    • Helpjuice
    • ProProfs Knowledge base
    • Confluence
    • Help Scout
    • Help Docs

    Kovai.co – Tools Used to Run The Startups

    Microsoft OneNote captures all my to-do lists, ideas, notes, etc. It is a flexible tool – to manage my day-to-day tasks efficiently. Microsoft teams for communication and collaboration within teams. It is one of the powerful tools that helped us get going during the pandemic. Their integration with third-party collaboration tools makes them a very robust tool.

    The team uses Adobe Photoshop extensively for designing dashboards and elements. It is their go-to design tool for image creation and graphic design. Microsoft Azure DevOps practices and tools provide support in building and deploying applications. It offers reliable support during each development lifecycle.

    Kovai.co – Recognition and Achievements

    Kovai.co has won the following awards in the last two years

    1. Bootstrapped SaaS Startup of the year 2021 by SaaSBoomi – a community of SaaS Founders in India
    2. Bootstrap Champ 2021 Award by The Economic Times Startup Awards
    3. Document360 recognized under the SaaS Category as part of Nasscom Emerge 50 Awards.

    FAQs

    What type of company is Kovai.co?

    Kovai.co is an Enterprise Software & SaaS products company.

    Who is the founder of Kovai.co?

    Saravana Kumar is the founder of Kovai.co.

    When was Kovai.co founded?

    Kovai.co was founded in 2011.

    What are the products of Kovai.co?

    Kovai.co has four different products. These are:

    • BizTalk360
    • Serverless360
    • Document360
    • Cerebrata

  • Tips to Convert More Leads Into Sales for SaaS Startups

    Designing a website for your business and creating an appealing & attractive online presence can bring you numerous website visitors, who are your potential clients. Converting those potential customers into loyal paying customers needs a proper strategy. A visitor takes micro-moments on your website to decide upon your brand, capturing those moments strategically can create sales for your business. A good conversion strategy helps you boost your business exponentially.

    Here are some tips shared by entrepreneurs from SaaS industry, about how to convert more leads into sales

    Shayak Mazumder, Co-founder, Eunimart

    Identifying the ICP (ideal customer profile) and buyer personas lead to very pointed GTM (go-to-market) strategies. In our case, we studied the market and realized the exact definition of our customers and what kind of roles in those companies were driving the sales. Based on that, we defined the biggest problem statements they had, the solutions they needed, and our competitive edge. This customized approach led to clarity among the end-users. This led to targeted messaging per customer. This is the secret sauce to converting more leads.

    Robin Das, CEO of Brandintelle

    Here are certain things you could do convert more leads-

    • Define your ICP or ideal customer profile.
    • Make sure your MVP is best suited for your ICP including all your marketing communications and positioning.

    Pramod Gummaraj, CEO, Aprecomm

    Always understands the customer and his pain points. Do not rush to sell something to the customers without understanding them. Understand their problems and the priority of those, their budget constraints, and then try to see if there is something our product can solve. Be flexible with product features to appeal to the customers.

    How to Create a High-Converting Lead Magnet Like a Pro
    A Lead magnet is an amazing way to increase sales and attract customers. Let’s look at how you can create a lead magnet in a few simple steps.
    StartupTalkyBhoraniya Huda Hifzur Rehman

    Mr Arjun Gupta, Founder, Courseplay

    Stay in touch! I tell this to my sales team at Courseplay all the time. The easiest thing to avoid if you have reached out to the customer at the wrong time is that you forget about them and, even worse, they forget about you. Regular follow-ups and connecting with different people at different levels of the organization would help ensure you are there when they need you.

    Shreyan Gandhi – Director and Co-founder, Comket Solutions

    Shreyan Gandhi - Director and Co-founder, Comket Solutions
    Shreyan Gandhi – Director and Co-founder, Comket Solutions

    Based on the product we’ve built, the best approach to conversions are demonstrations. Being a product that has a ‘wow’ factor that sells itself, we only have to make sure demos happen frequently and through all channels possible.

    Sarvagya Mishra – Co-founder & Director, SuperBot (PinnacleWorks)

    Sarvagya Mishra - Co-founder & Director, SuperBot (PinnacleWorks)
    Sarvagya Mishra – Co-founder & Director, SuperBot (PinnacleWorks)

    If the lead gets qualified, i.e. the person is interested in taking your products/services, then the one tip to convert that lead into sales is rigorous follow-up. The consumer memory is very weak and fickle. If we do not approach them on time and take regular follow-ups, they tend to forget their enquiries as well as get dicey about the need of the same. Also, in a competitive market like today’s the one who approaches first and repetitively, is the one who gets the conversion. Thus the tip is “timely communication”