SaaS: How About a Middle Ground?

Last Fall, I wrote a widely read piece called Venture Capital in India, in which I pegged the Indian venture boom to be largely in Real Estate, Retail, and to an extent in Consumer Internet, not much in actual technology.

Last week, Sujai Karampuri made a well researched case for technology product companies in India.

In the recently concluded Philippe Courtot interview series, we discussed at length the various ways in which India and China could undercut US companies, and Philippe acknowledged that in his business (Qualys is an outsourced managed security service provider, a SaaS play), it is quite possible that an Indian company could come up with a vastly lower cost structure, and customers would switch immediately, if they are convinced about the reliability of the service.

Just to set the economics in perspective, Qualys has invested $65 Million to build an infrastructure that “is at the scale of the planet” to monitor, audit and report network security problems.

Let me throw a challenge in the direction of the Indian entrepreneurs: Go figure out how to build this same business for $30 Million, and I can tell you, you will have an absolute winner in your hands.

ps. You can read the Courtot interview here:

[Part 1]
[Part 2]
[Part 3]
[Part 4]
[Part 5]
[Part 6]
[Part 7]
[Part 8]
[Part 9]
[Part 10]
[Part 11]

This segment is a part in the series : SaaS

Comments

We are developing an eCommerce platform for unorganised service sector using SaaS and Social Networing concepts, looking for early stage funding, I can be reached at bhaskar.roy@chikpea.com

Bhaskar Roy Friday, February 16, 2007 at 12:37 PM PT

[…] I have already started doing some of this right here. Read Concept Arbitrage: Web 3.0 & Enterprise 3.0, and SaaS: How About a Middleground? […]

Sramana Mitra on Strategy » Blog Archive » Indian Incubator Fund : Specs (Part 1) Sunday, March 4, 2007 at 8:51 AM PT

[…] for technology entrepreneurs in India to explore as segments where new companies can be formed: SaaS, Enterprise 3.0 and web […]

Sramana Mitra on Strategy » Blog Archive » Entrepreneurship in India Tuesday, March 20, 2007 at 12:04 PM PT

[…] for technology entrepreneurs in India to explore as segments where new companies can be formed: SaaS, Enterprise 3.0 and web […]

Entrepreneurship in India « Startup Dunia - Indian startups and Entrepreneurship Thursday, April 5, 2007 at 9:32 AM PT

Hi, we are planning to partner with a2zapplications.com- India’s First SaaS Platform Company. Check out this Dehi based company. They are providing SaaS Patform (Business Operating System on Web) to SMBs in virtually all industries. As we know Salesforce.com is trying to reposition their CRM SaaS as Generic SaaS platform by force.com or apex announcements, but I am sure it will still be considered by customers as Sales, Mktg, Support solutions. But a2zapplications.com was born with an idea of running a common Software patform over Internet to meet any needs of SMBs worldwide, especially in India.

Charlie Friday, December 21, 2007 at 2:01 AM PT

I beleive Avenues India has launched pioneering SaaS solutions in India like http://www.resAvenue.com ; http://www.eventAvenue.com; http://www.eventAvenue.com etc. Just check them out.

Sandeep Srivastav Friday, November 14, 2008 at 12:21 PM PT

India based WOLF Frameworks, Platform-as-a-Service gains greater momentum. Adds new customers in Asia Pacific market, launched Google integration kit. Cloud computing provider which makes cost sense

Adi Friday, July 10, 2009 at 12:30 AM PT