While the long-term story for software-as-a-service (SaaS) start-ups from India looks exciting, finding the right talent has been the biggest challenge for the sector, Freshwork’s founder and CEO Girish Mathrubootham said.
“We are seeing several trends through the Together Fund, an $80-million seed fund for finding and helping global SaaS start-ups from India. A lot of vertical SaaS, CRM and development tools are coming from Indian start-ups. Early traction has been seen for Web 3 and crypto start-ups as well. This is going to be the decade for India as a product nation,” Mathrubootham said during an interaction with Sequoia Capital India’s MD Rajan Anandan at the Nasscom Technology & Leadership Forum 2022.
‘Growth problem’
He added, “When we started, the biggest problem was to find the right office space. But today’s biggest challenge for us and the entire (SaaS) ecosystem is whether we have enough experienced talent to quickly ramp up and scale the business. We have a lot of youngsters and qualified engineers in India, but are they ready? This is a growth problem.”
Anandan said that the growth of SaaS start-ups is visible with the kind of traction they have been getting.
After a blockbuster listing on NASDAQ, Freshwork’s stock price corrected in a recent trend of market-wide tech stocks sell off. However, Mathrubootham remains optimistic of the company’s long-term growth.
He said, “We are in this (business) for the long game. We cannot control what the market does but we are well capitalised. We raised a billion dollars in the IPO and we have more in the bank.”