Enterprise Software Startup Sapience Enters Into B2C With New Product, Seeks $20 Mn Revenue By 2018

Pune-based enterprise software tech startup, Sapience Analytics has forayed into the B2C segment with the launch of its new product – “Sapience Buddy.”

Founded in 2009 by Shirish Deodhar, Madhukar Bhatia, Swati Deodhar and Hemant Joshi Sapience Analytics is often cited as one of the most promising product technology firms to have emerged from the country’s startup ecosystem.

The startup has developed employee productivity and time management software that claims to deliver 20% more work output for organisations and also provides analytics for companies to fill performance related gaps. Presently, the startup has more than 100,000 users in 10 countries and about 65 Clients across the world. Sapience is also a part of TieCon 2015 which is scheduled to happen in next two days.

Sapience’s latest product Buddy’s pilot version was launched for three months which had 250 users testing the beta version. Sapience Buddy a PC – based software application that automatically discovers daily work patterns and time spent on multiple work activities. The product uses the insights gained from over 200 million hours of workplace data to offer working professionals a user friendly and intuitive PC application to achieve more and with reduced stress.

Shirish Deodhar, CEO, Sapience Analytics said, “Over the past 4 years, our flagship product Sapience Enterprise has become a pioneer and market leader in enabling organizations to become Mindful Enterprises. Sapience Buddy is a self-empowered application that rests on the individual’s mobile or work desktop, and is enabled to protect both the employees’ privacy from company servers, as well as protect the company data from being accessed by third parties.” He added that with people taking to wearables to increase fitness and health, self-improvement tools in the work space too is gaining momentum.

The Pune-based analytics firm sees its revenue and valuation increase with its foray into the B2C segment. Sapience, which counts Tech Mahindra, Mckinsey Solutions, KPIT Cummins as its clients for its enterprise software estimates that around 50,000 users will download the product’s lite version by 2015-16. Out of which 25% of the users are expected to upgrade to the paid version, which has been priced globally at $2 (INR 125) for a month.

Expecting one million users to be using the newly launched product, Deodhar commented on the revenue generation by saying, “We are seeing revenue of INR 2 Cr ($312K) from paid users by 2015-16. We are aiming at overall revenue of $20 Mn in the next three years and are also expecting our revenue growth from the B2C segment to be 50% of the total revenue.”

Prior to this, the product technology startup had raised INR 45 Cr in Series B funding from Orios Venture Partners, INR 4.5 Cr in Series A funding from Seed Ventures and $350K (about INR 2.1 Cr) from the Indian Angel Network.

The India focused Venture Fund Orios Venture Partners primarily invests in software and technology enabled startup. Till date, the early stage venture fund has invested in startups viz Ola, Zapstitch, Pretty Secrets, Snaplion, Ziffi, Druva, Hashcube amongst others.