Chennai-based startups that are reimagining the SaaS industry

Besides art, architecture, dance and delicious dosas, Chennai is now known for its SaaS startups. The Tamil Nadu government’s aggressive promotion of startups has seen the emergence of Special Economic Zones (SEZ) in Chennai, and business and trade laws that offer a competitive and hassle-free environment for startups and new businesses. Fast-paced infrastructure development and a strong IT talent base are also attracting more startups to the region. 

Chennai alone has over 1000 SaaS startups with two of 2021's leading unicorns: Freshworks and Chargebee. It is little wonder then that the city has a new moniker - the SaaS capital of India. 

Here are some Chennai-based startups that are disrupting SaaS technologies by offering solutions across categories.

Chargebee

Founded by Krish Subramanian, Rajaraman Santhanam, Saravanan KP, and Thiyagarajan T, Chargebee is a subscription and revenue management platform.

It manages the revenue operations of over 4,000 subscription-based businesses, ranging from large enterprises to early-stage startups, such as Calendly, Pret a Manger, Freshworks, and Doodle.

The startup captures an enterprise’s entire revenue lifecycle - from the first interaction to the closing of the books each month, empowering teams to make business growth decisions with confidence, through seamless and simple integrations.

The Chennai-based IT and business management Software as a Service (SaaS) startup specialises in recurring billing, invoicing, and subscription management.

Chargebee helps businesses across verticals, including e-learning, SaaS, IoT, e-commerce, and publishing, etc. Its services are available across 60 countries.

In February 2022, the startup raised a $250 million funding round co-led by Tiger Global and Sequoia Capital, Insight Partners, Spphire, and Streadview Capital for product innovation and global expansion to support the billing and revenue needs of current and future subscription businesses as well as strategic corporate growth initiatives.

CultureMonkey

Founded in 2018 by Joseph Christopher, Senthil Kumar Muthamizhan, and Tushar Kalia, Chennai-based employee management and engagement platform CultureMonkey helps workplaces create a happy and safe environment for their employees, enabling their people to be at their best in building long-term, successful, and sustainable companies that aspire to make ‘treating people fairly’ their core differentiator.

The company enables managers to set, track, and measure engagement goals through employee superior and robust metrics that provide real-time analytics and sentiment analytics, and based on this, the company provides actionable advice.

CultureMonkey aims to empower managers with its unique solutions through surveys and feedback management.

By offering unified communication, with intuitive UI/UX, multi-channel and multi-lingual surveys, high customisation, and super-fast implementation, CultureMonkey is helping companies make employee-first

cultures. 

With a seamless in-app experience, automation workflow with customised, affordable, and extremely beneficial company strategies that people will buy and excel at, the company is disrupting workplaces with digital processes.

Everstage

Everstage, founded by Siva Rajamani and Vivek Suriyamoorthy in 2020, is a B2B SaaS platform that automates sales commission processes for companies.

It presently has customers across four continents and counts companies such as Chargebee, Postman, Nitro, Hackerrank, and Clevertap among its customers.

Everstage allows companies to design and manage even the most complex plans while ensuring a modern user interface and user experience and a consumer app-like experience.

The company is a no-code commissions automation platform that removes recurring busywork for operations and finance teams, and provides a transparent and gamified incentives experience for customer-

facing teams.

In April 2022, the startup raised $13 million in Series A from Elevation Capital and 3one4 capital to expand engineering, sales, and solutions teams to serve customers worldwide.

Nesh LIVE

Chennai-based Nesh.Live, founded in 2012 by Venkat Nathan, offers original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) full-stack SaaS solutions for vehicle connectivity.

The startup uses data for product advancements, enhancing customer experience, service improvements, or launching a new line of business as a Telematics Service Provider (TSP).

NESH Live aims to improve vehicle safety and efficiency for all vehicles, including cars, trucks, and two-wheelers, as well as improve public transportation.

The startup uses artificial intelligence data stored in the cloud to create insights and decision points that can help owners, fleet owners, manufacturers, and service networks.

It works with EV manufacturers right from the vehicle engineering stage to identify critical sensory points needed to extract data.

Maximl

Founded in 2016 by Ajay Krishnan Jayagopal, Manish Arora, Pankaj Pawan, and Samir Otiv, Maximl offers a full-stack collaboration platform for deskless workers in process industries.

The startup works in areas such as operations, maintenance, and safety and quality control.

It builds technologies to rapidly digitise ground operations, enabling efficient collaboration for the industrial workforce.

Maximal implements digital workflows and lets stakeholders collaborate from anywhere, with or without the internet.

The startup enables real-time communication between stakeholders and unifies data from all the different moving pieces to ensure projects are on a budget and on schedule.

It currently works with companies including Reliance Industries Limited, Bharat Petroleum, and Numaligarh Refinery Limited.

(The copy was updated with a new image.)