Would you believe that we’re already towards the end of the first month of the new year? Be that as it may, it’s also time for the fourth edition of our weekly roundup that brings everything that happened in the fast-paced world of SaaS at one place. So without further ado, let’s begin.<\/p>\n
News of the week \u00a0<\/strong> SaaS startup Uniplatform Tech raises undisclosed amount from Frontline Strategy Funds, SucSEED Ventures, others<\/a> In numbers<\/strong> Must reads\u00a0<\/strong> Should your free edition… be even free-er?\u00a0<\/a> \u201cB2B saas companies today are not driven by marketing, it’s driven by product first. Figure out your niche and while you’re building a product\/service, build towards building a moat.\u201d – Digbijoy Shukla, Head of Startup Ecosystem, @awscloud<\/a> #YSInvestorSummit<\/a><\/p>\n \u2014 YourStory (@YourStoryCo) January 31, 2020<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n
\nFrontify raises $22.3M to help businesses manage how their brands and logos get used\u00a0<\/a>
\nFor a brand, it’s important to ensure that its logos are properly used by others. Enter Frontify which solves this problem by ensuring that everyone in the team has access to the latest brand assets. The company dubs itself as a pioneer of a new category called Brand Management, and also provides integrations for design tools like Figma and Adobe XD.<\/p>\n
\nSaaS is touching even traditional industries such as real estate. Multiplymyleads is a website that brings together real estate brokers, developers and builders as well as consumers at one place. The service also combines leads from multiple sources, and while currently, it’s operational in Hyderbad, will also expand to Delhi after its recent fundraise.<\/p>\n
\nSaaS funding in India crosses $1 billion for the first time in 2019; has shown a 20x increase since 2009\u00a0<\/a>
\nRelated read: Huge opportunity for Indian SaaS companies make investors bullish<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n
\nFrom being spurned for a loan to creating a unicorn: the Girish Mathrubootham story<\/a>
\nFreshworks is one of the most successful SaaS companies out of India, having raised ~$400million and on the way to reach $1billion in revenue soon. Girish Mathrubootham started the company back in 2010 as Freshworks to offer customer support, CRM, etc. to companies. It has come a long way since then, with its IPO planned in the next year.<\/p>\n
\nAs far as conventional wisdom goes, SaaS products shouldn’t offer too many features in their free plan so that users transition to the paid plans. However, if you look at the popular software like Slack and Zoom, then a case can be made for the free service to be really good to ensure a sticky use-case, which in long run, helps in converting them to paid subscribers too.<\/p>\n\n