Meet The 6 SaaS Startups That Won The SaaSBOOMi Awards 2021

The Indian Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) market has grown by leaps and bounds in the last few years. With it, many SaaS startups have emerged in the country, grabbing the attention of global investors. This is evident from the funding raised by the sector in the past few years. In 2021, Indian enterprisetech startups raised more than $3.2 Bn in investments.

In addition, the sector has also shown enormous potential for growth. A report by SaaSBOOMi estimated that the Indian SaaS sector was on track to generate revenue between $50 Bn and $70 Bn by 2030. The report also found that the Indian entrepreneurs were likely to dominate 4%-6% of the global market by 2030.

To recognise the work of Indian SaaS startups, this year’s SaaSBOOMi Awards winners have been announced. The awards felicitate homegrown startups for their achievements in six categories – SaaS Startup of the Year, Emerging SaaS Startup of the Year, Breakout SaaS of the Year, Bootstrapped SaaS Startup of the Year, DevTools SaaS Startup of the Year and Vertical SaaS Startup of the Year.

SaaSBOOMi claims to be India’s largest community of SaaS founders and product builders. Founded in 2015 as an informal group, it has grown to include more than 1,500 SaaS as part of initiatives to foster greater learning in the sector.

The SaaSBOOMi Awards were judged entirely by the SaaS community and aimed to highlight the growing clout of the sector within the overall startup ecosystem in the country. The list included Freshworks’ Girish Mathrubootham, Chargebee’s Krish Subramanian, Capillary Tech’s CEO Aneesh Reddy, Postman CTO Ankit Sobti, MadStreetDen CEO Ashwini Asokan, Eka Software CEO Manav Garg and Kissflow’s Suresh Sambandam.

Meet The SaaSBOOMi Award Winners

BrowserStack: SaaS Startup Of The Year

• Headquarters: Dublin, Ireland
• Founders: Ritesh Arora, Nakul Aggarwal
• Founded In: 2011
• Total Funding: $250 Mn
• Key Investors: Accel, BOND and Insight Partners
• No. Of Customers/Clients: 50,000+

BrowserStack took home the trophy for the “SaaS Startup Of The Year”. BrowserStack is an app testing platform that allows its clients to comprehensively test mobiles and apps through millions of combinations of digital environments. This allows developers to build bug-free apps without the need for large scale manpower to test such systems. It also offers products that enable firms to scale testing and ship products faster without any issues. 

The Ireland-headquartered startup has more than 50,000 customers from as many as 135 countries. BrowserStack also claims to have over 4 Mn developers who have reportedly signed up for its products across the globe.

The startup last raised $200 Mn in Series B funding last year, which valued it at $4 Bn. Since then, the startup has grown to more than 1,000 employees and is backed by marquee investors such as Accel, BOND and Insight Partners. Interestingly, the startup has been profitable since day one and has been a market leader since its early days. 

Going ahead, the startup plans to expand its product offerings. It also aims to scale its business and ramp up hiring in key roles such as engineering, sales and marketing. Speaking about its long term plans, BrowserStack said that it aims to be the go-to platform for startups to test and ship software. 

Rattle: Emerging SaaS Startup Of The Year 

• Headquarters: San Francisco, US
• Founders:  Sahil Aggarwal, Milan Pal Singh, Apoorva Verma
• Founded In: 2020
• Total Funding: $28.8 Mn
• Key Investors: Insight Partners, Lightspeed, GV and Sequoia
• No. Of Customers/Clients: 100+ Customers and 4000+ users

At this year’s SaaSBOOMi awards, Rattle won the “Emerging SaaS startup Of The Year” award. 

Rattle is an enterprisetech startup that sits on top of solutions such as Salesforce and Slack, and allows team members to set up and automate their workflows. 

The startup raised a massive $26 Mn in its Series A funding round earlier this month, led by Insight Partners. Till date, Rattle has raised $28.8 Mn in funding from big institutional investors such as GV (formerly Google Ventures), Lightspeed, and Sequoia.

The startup claims to have more than 4,000 users on its rolls including companies such as Miro, Rippling and ClearBit. It has a team of just 20 people. 

The startup aims to ramp up hiring and scale its operations by the end of this year. Rattle also plans to deploy all enterprise softwares through the platform on all engagement apps by 2025. 

CleverTap: Breakout SaaS Startup Of The Year 

• Headquarters: California, US
• Founders: Sunil Thomas, Anand Jain, Suresh Kondamudi
• Founded In: 2013
• Total Funding: $76.1 Mn
• Key Investors: Sequoia, Tiger Global, Accel
• No. Of Customers/Clients: 1,000+

CleverTap won the award for the “Breakout SaaS Startup Of The Year”. CleverTap works with apps to increase user retention and customer lifetime value in terms of revenue. The platform leverages deeptech and first-party data to personalise and automate engagement with app users. Essentially, CleverTap enables consumer brands to understand their users better and engage the customers across multiple touchpoints. 

CleverTap claims that its clients created more than 9 Mn campaigns and sent over 1 Tn personalised messages to their users last year.

The startup has more than 1, 000 clients under its belt such as PharmEasy, Nykaa, MX Player, Tata CLiQ, Premier League, Dream11, Air Asia, Carousell, and Gojek. 

The startup was founded in 2013 by Anand Jain, Sunil Thomas and Suresh Kondamudi. The trio left their jobs at Network18 to build a customised platform which can analyse user behaviour and send them personalised notifications. CleverTap has so far raised $76.1 Mn across different funding rounds and is backed by big names such as Sequoia, Tiger Global and Accel.

The startup claims to have crossed the $55 Mn Annualised Run Rate (ARR) mark in March this year. It also claims to have gross margin upwards of 73% and net revenue retention at 124% in FY22. The startup plans to reach an ARR of $100 Mn by the end of this year. The California-based startup also plans to ramp up its presence in key markets of North America and Europe this year. CleverTap also has underlined its plans to go public by 2025. 

PriceLabs: Bootstrapped SaaS Startup Of The Year 

• Headquarters: Chicago, US
• Founders: Richie Khandelwal, Anurag Verma, Syed Sana Hassan
• Founded In: 2014
• Total Funding: Bootstrapped
• Key Investors: NA
• No. Of Customers/Clients: 15,000+

Proptech startup PriceLabs emerged as the winner of the SaaSBOOMi “Bootstrapped Startup Of Year” award. PriceLabs offers revenue management software catering to the vacation and short-term rental industry. The platform uses proprietary algorithms to crunch market data and helps property managers maximise revenues. 

The startup tracks rental and hotel data from around the globe to identify trends in bookings. This is then used to generate unique prices for clients’ local listings. The startup claims to have priced more than 1 Lakh listings across 95 countries globally. 

PriceLabs claims to have grown 3X in 2021 and doubled its team during the same period. The Chicago-based startup claims to have more than 15,000 customers on its rolls. 

PriceLabs plans to build a bigger team to cash in on its growth momentum. Over the long term, the startup intends to diversify its product offerings and create more streams of revenue to lead its next stage of growth.

Hevo Data: DevTools SaaS Startup Of The Year 

• Headquarters: San Francisco, US
• Founders: Manish Jethani, Sourabh Agarwal
• Founded In: 2017
• Total Funding: $43 Mn
• Key Investors: Sequoia Capital, Chiratae Ventures, Qualgro Partners
• No. Of Customers/Clients: 1,000+

Hevo Data was picked as the winner for this year’s SaaSBOOMi “DevTools SaaS Startup of the Year”. Hevo Data is an automated self-serve no-code data pipeline platform that loads data from any source into warehouses like Snowflake, Google BigQuery, Amazon Redshift, and others. 

The startup helps companies combine data from a wide array of applications including CRM, advertising channels, martech, financial system software, and customer support products to allow companies to get up-to-date data in their warehouse. 

The startup offers services to more than 1,000 companies spread across 35 countries.  It claims to have grown its revenue by 4X over the last year and to be well on track to grow it further by 3X this year. 

The startup has so far raised $43Mn in funding across multiple funding rounds. Hevo Data is backed by big names in the investor world such as Sequoia Capital, Chiratae Ventures and Qualgro Partners.

The startup is based out of San Francisco and operates with a team of more than 200 people. Hevo Data plans to continue investing in product development and add more people to its workforce. Outlining its long term plans, the startup plans to expand its user offerings to allow non-technical users to utilise the platform. 

FarEye: Vertical SaaS Startup Of The Year

• Headquarters: Delhi NCR
• Founders: Kushal Nahata, Gautam Kumar, Gaurav Srivastava
• Founded In: 2013
• Total Funding: $150 Mn
• Key Investors: Indian Angel Network, 23i, Eight Roads Ventures
• No. Of Customers/Clients: 150+

Logistics management startup FarEye clinched the SaaSBOOMi award for the “Vertical SaaS Startup Of The Year.” 

The startup aims to solve the complicated last-mile delivery issues through its automation software that allows companies to schedule and dispatch jobs, monitor execution and analyse performance in real-time.

The startup has so far raised $150 Mn in funding from a slew of marquee names such as Indian Angel Network, Eight Roads Ventures, Honeywell  Ventures, SAIF Partners, among others. 

The Noida-based startup claims to work with 150 companies across 30 countries such as Gordon Food Service, Hilti, and Tata Steel. The startup also has an office in Chicago which serves as its US headquarters. The startup claims to process more than 5 Mn transactions per day. 

The startup claims to have grown by 200% since the pandemic and has more than 900 employees on its rolls. 

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