Bengaluru has 27% of top 30 Indian IT product firms
MUMBAI/BENGALURU: Away from the e-commerce euphoria, there’s a bunch of Indian software product companies that is bolstering the domestic startup ecosystem with impressive valuations of their own.
The top 30 software product companies – catering largely to businesses (B2B) – have an estimated enterprise valuation of $6.2 billion (Rs 37,500 crore), according to a new index launched by Bangalore-based software product thinktank, iSpirt, the findings of which were shared with TOI. The list includes the likes of Eka, Pubmatic, Freshdesk, Druva, Zoho and Quick Heal, among others, that have been growing rapidly at a time when most of the spotlight has fallen on the astronomical valuations of a few domestic consumer tech firms.
According to iSpirt’s India Software Products Industry Index, as many as 27% of the top 30 most valued companies were headquartered in Bengaluru, while 20% were in Delhi NCR, with the remainder spread across Mumbai, Kerala, Pune, Silicon Valley, London and Singapore. Together, these companies – mostly privately held – have 18,250 employees.
About 37% of these companies are bootstrapped, without any institutional funding, and were started in the 1990s and 2000s. Most of the funded companies got growth, rather than early-stage venture financing, unlike the internet/tech startups. Just over 50% of the ventures provide end-user business applications in segments such as CRM, trading, business intelligence and banking, while 20% are advertising tech companies, says the report by iSpirt, which was founded last year when some felt the need for a dedicated software product association distinct from IT industry body Nasscom.”After the IT wave came the internet and e-commerce companies. However, now the value creation will happen in the software product sector. The size of the US market alone for enterprise software products is estimated at $500 billion, so there is a huge potential for creating many billion-dollar companies in this space,” said Dev Khare, MD of Lightspeed Venture and fellow at iSpirt. He said there is also a huge opportunity to develop India-centric applications and software businesses that leverage on the proliferation of smartphones.
As many as 85 companies are part of the index. Some, like mobile ad network InMobi, chose not to participate. If InMobi had, it would have added significantly to the overall valuation figure, considering that %it had an estimated $1-billion valuation when it raised $200 million from Japan’s Softbank in 2011.
For public firms, their market cap was used as the valuation measure. For VC-backed companies, their valuation from the last round of funding was considered, and for bootstrapped ventures, revenue growth and market comparables were used.
Delhi-based Wingify, a website-optimizing firm that is part of the top 30, is a bootstrapped venture. The company expects to clock $9 million in revenue this fiscal. “We recently doubled our engineering team strength to 20 and hired many product managers. We are exploring partnerships in Japan and Australia,” said its co-founder Paras Chopra. Today, the startup employs 62 people and has 4,000 customers in over 80 countries.
Bangalore-based retail analytics firm Manthan Systems, another of the top 30, has had multiple rounds of funding, the last one of $15 million two years ago from Norwest Venture Partners. Its revenue is over $30 million, it has over 175 customers, including McDonald’s, Lowe’s and Haggen, and has over 700 employees. “Our solutions help retail customers in decision support and decision-making,” said Atul Batra, CTO of Manthan Systems.
