The State of Enterprise Software-as-Services (SaaS) in India

Using Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) has been talked about for a while and a few superb products such as Google Docs and SalesForce has underscored the viability of using software as a service. My personal experience of asking managers from the big software companies such as IBM has revealed that they still do not care much about this internet based software delivery model. Some research however shows that the SaaS model has already got software product companies in India transitioning into a subscription based delivery model for software used in business. I am briefly covering a few here in the Human Resources (HR), Customer Relationship Management (CRM), Document and Workflow management, Travel desk management, and Manufacturing control application segments. I am missing out on a couple of companies I had identified for Finance and Accounts, and Supply chain management solutions delivered the SaaS way. Overall, it does seem that with new investments and the rising adoption of a subscription based software delivery model, Indian companies can deliver most of the capabilities businesses require in their day to day operations.

Serving 300+ clients, Greytip‘s website says they process 290,000 pay slips per month.

Greytip software services encompasses the entire employee lifecycle from Recruitment, Employee Information Management, Attendance, Payroll, to Training and Exit.

Serving clients such as GMR Group, L&T and ABB, Channel Mentor automates their travel desk and travel management processes. I met with their CEO at this year’s NASSCOM product conclave who said he was looking forward to raising capital and releasing TravelGrid’s SaaS product variant.

Channel Mentor’s TravelGrid product automates the travel approval, booking, invoice creation, payment control, voucher verification, travel expense reporting processes and integrates to ERP system modules.

Serving tens of clients in India, Hyderabad based Nawa Software‘s OneOffice product line delivers comprehensive CRM functionality across sales force and contact management, marketing automation, customer support and project management processes.

From logging and tracking customer leads, pipeline analysis and sales forecasting, scheduling and reporting to marketing processes such as campaign and opportunity management to customer support processes such as issue tracking and service desk management, OneOffice delivers the benefits of having a 360 degree view of the customer.

With marquee clients such as Honeywell, Yokogawa, Rockwell, Suzlon, Robert Bosch, Schneider Electric and many others, Axcend has launched a Plant lifecycle management (PLM) solution focussing on automating maintenance processes.

M’Mansys, Axcend’s new product deals with Plant Asset Management, Preventive Maintenance, Breakdown Maintenance, General Maintenance, Spare Part Management, Utilization Management and Work Force Management, thus reducing maintenance costs of the organization. Axcend looks like the sort of company that has managed delivery of both services and products in their chosen area of specialisation which happens to be industrial automation and plant management systems.

All this shows that Enterprise SaaS is taking shape in India itself, maybe, this has escaped the notice of investors and entrepreneurs who have been just seeing web and mobile opportunities for the past year and more, but market realities and real customer requirements will make SaaS plays very interesting.