Ganesan told ET that companies have begun investing in customer onboarding even before they invest in traditional customer success software. “This is a good indicator for us that this space is emerging fast and the budget is getting created.” Rocketlane is also seeing brisk registrations for an onboarding-focussed event, indicating strong interest in its category.
Venture-capital backed Rocketlane is among a new crop of business-focussed SaaS companies from India that are just being discovered in the multi-billion-dollar US SaaS market. With established players such as Zoho and Freshworks focusing on business software such as help desks, CRM, accounting software, customer success and more, the new crop is cutting its teeth in the niches that are likely to reveal market depth in the coming years.
Until recently, “customer success” has been a much-talked-about niche that SaaS ventures have been tapping into: it refers to optimising the product package so that it delivers the best results at a competitive price for the customer.
Ganesan, who sold his in-app chat business Konotor to Freshworks, launched Rocketlane in the middle of the pandemic. The startup raised $18 million in a round led by 8VC in January, topping its $3-million seed round.
Rocketlane emerged as a leader on G2, which puts out peer-reviewed reports on business software, within six months of launch. Customers of its onboarding product include SaaS unicorns Chargebee and Yellow.ai.
Discover the stories of your interest
The SaaS sector has come a long way from where it was 10 years ago with the rapid adoption of public cloud software across the world. As more and more SaaS is gets sold, the process of onboarding new, large clientele will become critical for growing B2B SaaS providers. “Onboarding is the first partnership that a customer experiences with your B2B company. If you do a sloppy job there, you are on the backfoot from the get-go. If you impress and deliver value fast, you can have an expansion conversation early. So this impacts time-to-value, NRR, and churn, some of the most critical SaaS metrics that boards care about,” Ganesan said.
As for growth projections, he said expectations among SaaS companies, at least for the most part, has been to hit a 5x jump in the first year, up from 3x, which used to be the norm. He added that these expectations are on par with the capital flowing into SaaS firms, and that founders have to make sure the targets don’t increase the pressure on their teams. Rocketlane has raised $21 million in funding so far.
Now Based in Chennai, the company has just begun making its first recruitments in the US market. It plans to capitalise on its new-found traction with a two-day virtual global conference, Propel 22, on customer onboarding, which kicked off on April 10.
