boAt cofounder and CMO Aman Gupta’s observation on the secret sauce that makes a startup successful was the running theme in the second half of the third edition of ET Soonicorns Summit, which concluded on the evening ofSeptember 20 in Bengaluru.
In the fireside chat ‘‘To India with Love: Aman Gupta on Orchestrating boAt’s Product-driven Success’ with economictimes.com editor Deepak Ajwani, Gupta also spoke about the importance of making mistakes, staying grounded, and why one-product brands aren’t all bad. Read more about his session here.
Having different SaaS (Software as a service) approaches in different markets was one point of discussion in the panel, ‘Expanding the Indian SaaS Footprint at Home and Abroad: Scaling Strategies to Achieve the $37B Target’. The speakers were Yamini Bhat, cofounder and CEO, Vymo; Mitesh Shah, cofounder, Inflection Point Ventures; Tarun Joshi, founder and CEO, IGP.com, and Lalit Bhise, CEO and founder, Bizom.
Indian SaaS companies have been successful in setting a mark in international markets despite the recent downturn in the sector. But they have yet to meet their full potential when it comes to sales, Shah felt. When asked whether enterprise SaaS startups should change tack from serving international to domestic clients or maybe balancing both, he said:
“My advice is to cater to a market where your product sells. Of the companies I have observed in this space, at least 70% fail in their ability to sell the product. Selling SaaS requires skills. Some teams are so engrossed in creating a supremely well-refined product that they forget it is also ok to sell a product that is a little less efficient today”. Meanwhile, Bhat shared the example of a prawn supplier in Odisha who uses a local platform to manage bulk orders for hospitality clients and observed that SaaS is no longer exclusive to ‘white collar’ sectors.
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Intent is one thing in India’s fast growing green tech (and adjacent) sectors, and execution is another. The concluding panel of the day, ‘Sustainable Futures: Insights from changemakers in India’s climate tech, green energy, and EV sectors’ shed light not just on India’s policy push and pull between the Centre and states, but also the hiring vacuum in this space. The speakers for the panel were Srinath Ravichandran, cofounder and CEO, Agnikul; Routematic founder and CEO Sriram Kannan; Kazam chief Akshay Shekhar; Kajal Shah, cofounder and CEO of Dreamfly Innovations; and Varaha chief executive Madhur Jain.”You don’t get the calibre of scientists you need [as employees]. We found only nine people globally who met our requirements and closed the position after searching for 17 months,” Jain said when asked about the dearth of talent in sustainable tech. While Ravichandran spoke about the initial hurdle of founding a private space company when everyone wanted to work with ISRO, Kannan observed that mobility in general is a very local play, requiring local sustainable solutions. It wasn’t only about the challenges though. Shah shared that as a woman who has been in the deep tech space for 15 years, the investor, vendor, and client ecosystem in this sector has opened up to more women founders, scientists, and changemakers.
Other speakers at fireside chats, presentations, and panels included Classplus CEO Mukul Rustagi, FITTR founder Jitendra Chouksey, Awfis CMO Amit Ramani, investor Neeraj Tyagi, and Sanjay Khan Nagra of Khaitan & Co.
ET Soonicorns Summit 2024 was powered by Phoenix Kessaku. Upskilling Partner: UpGrad Enterprise; Insurance Partner: PolicyBazaar for Business; Banking Partner: Bank of India. Gifting Partners: IGP.com; The Mind and Company, Plum, Clay Capital.