The Neon Show SaaS, Chennai, Acquisition By Freshworks and Building Rocketlane with Founder, Srikrishnan Ganesan
As per Tracxn, there are 1100+ SaaS startups in Chennai as of Feb 2023.
Chennai has rightfully gained the title of the SAAS capital of India, thanks to the expansion of companies such as Zoho and Freshworks.
Although these two firms have recently surpassed the $500 million revenue milestone, making them the most prominent success stories in the realm of Indian-based SAAS companies, there are other companies contributing to Chennai's reputation in the market. Chargebee, CloudCherry, HappyFox, and FourKites are among the businesses that are creating a unique space in the industry.
In this episode, we have with us Srikrishnan Ganesan Founder, Rocketlane. Srikrishnan's SaaS journey began with Konotor, which got acquired by FreshWorks and later became Freshchat. He has experienced scaling from 0 to 100 and is now building Rocketlane, a customer onboarding platform that reduces time to value and eliminates hit-or-miss experiences.
During the episode, he talks about his inspiration behind building Rocketlane, Planning and doing GTM early on being a SaaS founder, setting up a base in Chennai, and much more.
Notes -
00:00 - Highlights of the conversation
01:32 - Intro to Srikrishnan Ganesan, Rocketlane and Chennai’s SaaS ecosystem
02:36 - Why do SaaS founders prefer Chennai?
06:09 - Advantages of building prior-product building experience
09:50 - Choosing the domain for Rocketlane
13:12 - Rocketlane’s Pre-Launch setup
18:53 - What works in customer conversation’s Pre-Launch?
22:44 - Why do SaaS founders ignore GTM?
24:35 - Raising their 1st round
26:32 - Choosing to become a Category creator
29:08 - Investing in Brand-building upfront
30:39 - Funding announcement with a Rap video
34:15 - Learnings from his journey
37:54 - Their strategy for Demand-Gen
40:29 - His thoughts on Generative-AI
45:47 - Slowness demand for Rocketlane or similar companies serving SMBs