Jul 12, 2024 · 1h 32m · neon-show
These 90 Minutes Will Teach You Everything About SaaS Business | SaaSBOOMi Co-Founder | Neon Show
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In this in-depth masterclass on the Neon Show, Eka Software founder and Together Fund co-founder Manav Garg shares his journey from small-town Punjab to building, scaling, and successfully exiting a global enterprise SaaS platform. He breaks down critical playbooks on Go-To-Market distribution, cloud transformations, Generative AI opportunities, and cultivating personal resilience to scale India's software ecosystem.
How this conversation actually went
Every chapter scored 0–10 on four independent dynamics. Hover any point for the reasoning behind the score. How this is scored →
Siddhartha as informed peer 3.5 Guest teaching 2.1 Guest disagreement 0.5 Siddhartha pushing back 0.5
speaking balance: gold is Siddhartha, purple is the guest (3 minute bins)
Sharpest disagreement ▶ 1:13:09 Rejection of the cost-arbitrage premise
Manav flatly rejects Siddhartha's argument that AI compute costs destroy India's margin moat, stating that enterprise SaaS was never won on cheap labor or cost structures.
Hardest push from Siddhartha ▶ 1:17:30 Host challenges Zoho 30-year timeframeWhen Manav cites Zoho as proof of billion-dollar Indian SaaS scale, Siddhartha immediately pushes back that Zoho took three decades compared to US hyper-scalers.
Biggest teaching moment ▶ 1:13:30 Educating on enterprise software trust over costManav schools Siddhartha on enterprise purchasing psychology, explaining that Fortune 50 buyers care about security and predictable hallucination safeguards rather than saving 20% on price.
Siddhartha holds their own ▶ 58:10 Host drills into VC fund economicsSiddhartha demonstrates sharp venture expertise by calculating the exact portfolio exit volume ($6B) required for a $115M fund to return meaningful capital to LPs.
the scores for every segment, with the reasoning behind each
| Chapter | Topic | Siddhartha as informed peer | Guest teaching | Guest disagreement | Siddhartha pushing back | Why |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Episode Highlights: From Small-Town Punjab to SaaS Pioneer | 3 | 0 | 0 | 0 | Introductory teaser and welcome remarks. Siddhartha introduces Manav Garg and positions both of their SaaS VC funds, setting a warm and collaborative peer tone. | |
| Roots in Moga, Engineering College, and Cultural Awakening | 2 | 1 | 0 | 0 | Manav shares his personal upbringing in Moga, Punjab, transitioning into English fluency, and his early exposure to the Bhagavad Gita. | |
| Family Background and Punjabi Entrepreneurial Mindset | 3 | 2 | 0 | 0 | Discussion centers on Punjabi SME culture, getting recruited at IIFT by GP Group, and explaining how authentic lateral thinking secured Manav the job. | |
| Global Commodity Trading and the Inception of Eka Software | 2 | 2 | 0 | 0 | Manav outlines scaling coffee trading desks internationally, manually tracking trades in MS Access, and the impulsive decision to resign and start a software product. | |
| Securing Seed Funding and Launching Eka in Bangalore | 3 | 1 | 0 | 0 | Manav describes pitching GP Group chairman Kirit Shah for $1M at 60% dilution and structuring software outsourcing deals in Bangalore. | |
| Scaling Enterprise Sales, Nexus Backing, and Silver Lake Investment | 4 | 3 | 0 | 0 | Manav explains enterprise contract dynamics, Nexus's entry, hiring global sales talent by cold calling competitors, and raising $40M from Silver Lake. | |
| The Commodity Crash, Cloud Migration, and Company Culture | 3 | 2 | 0 | 0 | Manav discusses the painful 2.5x revenue compression transitioning from perpetual enterprise licenses to SaaS during the commodity market crash. | |
| Building SaaSBOOMi and Inception of Together Fund | 4 | 1 | 0 | 0 | Both host and guest bond over early Indian angel investing, the creation of SaaSBOOMi with Girish Mathrubootham, and forming Together Fund. | |
| The Art of Crafting an Exit: Eka's Acquisition by STG | 3 | 3 | 0 | 0 | Manav provides a tactical breakdown of engineering an exit with STG, managing emotional identity separation, and readying institutional compliance years in advance. | |
| Future of Indian SaaS: Scaling Exits and Service-as-a-Software | 6 | 3 | 1 | 2 | Siddhartha presses with granular venture fund math, challenging whether Indian SaaS can realistically generate $6B in exit values to return Together Fund's capital, which Manav counters with historical growth ratios. | |
| Navigating the Generative AI Wave: Opportunities and Challenges | 5 | 4 | 3 | 2 | Siddhartha challenges the viability of Indian software cost arbitrage in AI due to compute and API margins; Manav firmly rejects the premise, arguing SaaS is never won on labor cost arbitrage but rather enterprise trust and reliability. | |
| Unlocking Global Distribution, Domestic SaaS, and Prosumer Markets | 5 | 3 | 2 | 3 | Siddhartha presses on why Indian SaaS hasn't produced rapid $100M ARR breakout distribution like Ramp or Wiz, and immediately notes Zoho took 30 years when Manav cites it as a billion-dollar outlier. | |
| Founder Wisdom: Relationships, Wellness, and Assembling Teams | 3 | 2 | 0 | 0 | Manav summarizes principles on manufacturing complementary co-founder teams, daily morning reflection habits, and detaching founder ego from business equity. |
Statements from this episode (22)
Garg: Local Indian Shops Win Over Big Retail Through Personal Relationships
“Local shop is winning because of two things. Relationship, your merchandise, and the cost. The retail comes in relationship goes away. There are foreign brands or big brands going to come. There is no relationship one to one level. So therefore, if somebody ha…”
Garg Was Offered a $10,000 Monthly Salary Out of IIFT in 1998
“You're earning 10,000 dollars a month. Where are you going to earn that? Siddharth Ahluwalia: In 98 you were? Manav Garg: Yeah, yeah. That, that, that, that was the package.”
Garg Diluted 60% of Eka Software for $1M in Seed Capital
“So that time we diluted about 60%. Yes, yes. Wow. Yeah. Because I had, so we discussed simple, that we, let's say, 60, 40 split.”
Garg Paid for Eka's First $350K Dev Contract With $250K in Equity
“So I actually, my first contract I signed was three 50 K services outsourced to Trigen technologies in Bangalore. Three 50 K contract, a hundred K in cash, two 50 K in equity.”
Eka Used Just $300K of Seed Funding Before Hitting Sustained Profitability
“So I should never use a million dollars that was given to me. Okay. So how much did you take it out of? Every 300,000 dollars. And then I was profitable all the time from there on.”
Eka Software Reached $3.5M–$4M Revenue at 30% EBITDA by 2010
“So by that time, we were three and a half, four million dollars and or 30% EBITDA.”
Eka Reached $34M Revenue and Raised $40M From Silver Lake in 2013–2014
“And then in 2013, you know, 1314, we touched about thirty four million dollars in revenue. Yeah. And nine million in a bit also. Yeah. We acquired two companies, one in Canada, one in Australia. And that's the point in time. We said, okay, let's get a private …”
Pivoting From On-Premise to Cloud SaaS Compresses Top-Line Revenue 2.5x
“2.5 times is the number. Yeah. So 2.5, not only churn, because let's say if I'm selling goods for you for one million dollars, then typical subscription will be, say, 50 K. So not only the churn happen, your revenue top lane starts coming down and profitabilit…”
Garg: Girish Mathrubootham and I built a 100+ startup angel portfolio
“So we'll write checks, 25 K, 50 K US dollars, and almost every weekend will help in helping one founder or the other. So that saw both our portfolio grew to a hundred. Grisha bought 60 investments. Fashion really scaled like hockey stick, right? Acre still wen…”
Eka Recovered to $30M Revenue With High Profitability Post-Cloud Pivot
“No, we hit, we actually touched the same peak again, touched thirty million again. Back again in revenue, but very profitable now. So we were able to get back the same thing. So value therefore increased because now we shifted to cloud. We survived first of al…”
Eka Closed $5M Enterprise Contracts Structured Over 5 to 7 Years
“TCV is very high. TCV sometimes go to even five million. Because contracts are five or seven year contracts payment, one year payment in advance. There's a machine critical software for all this very, very large companies.”
India Now Has 15 SaaS Companies Above $100M ARR
“If you look at just the SaaS ecosystem, about 15 companies, about hundred million plus, we about maybe hundred twenty-five million plus give and take on that range. And maybe we have Another 150 above ten million, above five million, another 200 companies, rig…”
India Will Produce 5x More $100M Software Companies by 2032
“So I think India can get 200 companies at a hundred million by 2030. Why not? Definitely India can get to that. So typically 15 in this decade, in the next decade, I would say 2030, 2032, give and take plus two years here. We can produce five X of what we prod…”
Indian SaaS Will Reach 6% Global Share and $70B in Revenue
“We are projecting about six percent. If you go to six percent, because SaaS is also a foundation also going, we will touch about 60, seventy billion dollars in revenue. That's what we need to touch. To get to that half a trillion to trillion dollar market cap.”
SaaS Requires $125M to Hit $100M ARR Versus $250M for Fintech
“See on an average, a SaaS company takes hundred twenty-five million dollars to touch a hundred million. A fintech company probably takes two fifty million dollars, right? So that way SaaS is extremely capital intensive and B to B marketplace will take probably…”
AI Will Create 'Service as a Software' Automating Half of Workforces
“So if you can, so therefore new category is going to emerge, in my opinion, which is now we said software service, service as a software, right? You would automate 50% of your workforce to software and then start selling as a service, which is AI and services.”
Indian Startups Will Develop an External CEO Layer Within Five Years
“I think in the next five years you will get that.”
India Will Rank Third Globally in AI Behind US and China
“Can India be number two? Number one, I doubt it. I don't have visibility to it. Can India be number three? Yes. Because of sheer economy of data, scale, data, people, talent, and Indian young population.”
Together Fund's AI Deal Flow Surged From 1 to 100 Startups Monthly
“So in Together Fund, when ChairGPT was launched, first six months, any silence. We saw maybe one company a month, which is an AI. We thought something is really wrong. Maybe Indians are not getting it. We are not able to get it. What we can do as a fund. After…”
Salesforce is Approaching $1 Billion in Indian Market Revenue
“Salesforce is almost crossing billion dollars of revenue from India.”
Founders Should 'Manufacture' Co-Founding Teams Rather Than Hire Friends
“So your co-founder has to be meritocratic in nature instead of your, the first friend from school
or your first love from your college coming and beginning to work with you. I think that's what I'm calling manufacturing co-friends, which means co-founders, wh…”