In this episode, we speak to Nikhil Kapur, Partner at Strive VC.

Before jumping to the topic let's learn about our guest first. Nikhil was passionate about coding right from school. Just after college, Nikhil joined Microsoft as a software engineer. He was part of the Microsoft Office mobile team. After working for three years there, he quit, to start his own company, TommyJams, a tech-enabled artist management platform.

He's currently a Partner VC at Strive and leads the Southeast Asia and India investments. He has invested in companies like SalesWhale, Classplus and Hasura.

In this episode, we talk about the State of SaaS in India. We also discuss the different challenges faced by global-focused and India-focused SaaS companies. Later in the episode, he shares the best practices for building SaaS for India.

Key Insights

• In the next 10 years, we'll see more product-led companies (eg- Postman) and India-focused SaaS companies (eg- Khatabook) come up.

• Indian SMEs might not pay you enough to build a $100mn ARR business. To do that, you need to change your business model ( eg- charging commissions for every transaction).

• There are five pillars for the startup ecosystem in India - Funding, Startups, People, Technology and Market.

If you're curious to know the future of SaaS in India, you need to listen to our conversation with Nikhil.