Prasanna Krishnamoorthy, Upekkha, Partner, made exciting revelations for SaaS founders and investors during his talk at the West Bridge Conference. Read on to discover the buzz in the B2B world and how Indian global SaaS startups are capital-efficient by default.

1. Lift & Shift: India -> US
Value SaaS
And it maybe easier than you think
upekkha.io

2. Who are we?
upekkha.io

3. Torch Bearer
upekkha.io
Value
SaaS
Capital Efficient Growth

4. Upekkha is an
Accelerator
that instills the
Value SaaS
mindset early
upekkha.io

5. Value SaaS is when you
have burn multiple less
than one
Bottom up by David Sacks
Burn Multiple Efficiency
Under 1x Amazing
1 - 1.5x Great
1.5 - 2x Good
2 - 3x Suspect
Over 3x Bad
The lower the Burn Multiple, the more efficient the
growth is. For venture-stage startups, these are
reasonably good rules of thumb.
upekkha.io

6. Historically best returns in
software came from capital
efficient software
companies
upekkha.io

7. 2004 IPO 2013 2015 2020
Original Value SaaS
upekkha.io

8. Value SaaS Rising
1 in 3 SaaS IPO
is Value SaaS
21
SaaS IPO in 2021
7
Value SaaS IPO
Burn Multiple < 1
upekkha.io

9. Value SaaS IPOs show that they can use ~$40m to get
to $100m in ARR and go public in ~11 years
upekkha.io
Company Ticker Total Funding ARR at IPO
Net burn
(funds - cash eqv)
Burn
Multiple
Expensify EXFY 38 141 29 0.21
Olo OLO 82 122 6 0.05
SEMRush SEMR 47 146 11 0.08
Source - UP Internal Research & Analysis

10. India SaaS for the is by default
Value SaaS
upekkha.io

11. 1 in 2 billion dollar B2B startup from Valley had Indian founder and
back office in India
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12. India SaaS is the
trend of front office
as well in India
and being more capital efficient
upekkha.io
HQ here
Front Office
Exit Exit

13. Align the front office move to
global HQ with sales motion
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14. But what holds Indian founders
back?
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16. Common challenges made moving from India -> US
Mindset shift required -> Trust by default in US/EU
Reset your cultural expectations;
High cost of mistakes
Grilled Fish vs Thali (aka Point product vs Platform)
Vitamins at The Vitamin Shop aka Positioning
Specific vs Everything, everywhere, all at once
Price RIGHT for US market (SMB, land & expand, true enterprise deals)
First principles thinking especially around GTM

17. First principles - visual thinking with
Wardley maps
upekkha.io

18. Global SaaS Brand (from India)
Genesis Custom Product Commodity
Value
upekkha.io
Get to $100m ARR
Create
Defensibility
Cross Border Business
Geo Barriers
Time to Unit Economics
$11m ARR
Scale 10 to
$100m ARR
Grow from $1
to 10m
Front Office
Leadership
Sales
Marketing
R&D Back Office
UX
Product Manager
Cloud Developer

19. Genesis Custom Product Commodity
Value
upekkha.io
1 - MOAT in PLOT(e)
M = Market is large,
O = online lead driven by search
A = Affordable,
T = Trial is easy
In P = Intuitive Product,
LOT = Low Touch Sales,
(e) = Engaged
Marketing Led
Growth Strategy
Marketing Led
Growth
Create
Defensibility
Cross Border Business
Geo Barriers
Back Office Front Office
Leadership
Product
Marketing
Sales
100% Inbound
Sales
Guerilla Marketing
to Brand building
SEM
Commodity Category

20. Genesis Custom Product Commodity
Value
upekkha.io
Slow longer cycle to build the
new category product
Predictable path from land to
expand (Doctrine)
Expansion Led
Growth Strategy
Create
Defensibility
Cross Border Business
Geo Barriers
Expansion Led
Growth
Back Office
Leadership
Product
New Category
Sales - Land Expansion
Part India Part US

21. Prasanna K
Managing Partner
@prasanna_says
Questions?
upekkha.io

22. Thanks
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