Entrepreneur Thiyagarajan Maruthavanan creates the value SaaS community for Indian SaaS startups
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India is forecasted to become a front-runner in the cloud computing world within the next eight years. Increased investment for SaaS companies, like venture-backed companies in the US, has powered the rise of new unicorns in the country. Additionally, there has been a visible rise in the number of early-stage startups with revenues of at least $10m.
About Thiyagarajan Maruthavanan, a SaaS expert
Thiyagarajan (Rajan) Maruthavanan is a dedicated entrepreneur and startup mentor who helps early-stage startup founders to develop value-based businesses instead of vanity-based businesses. Apart from this, he has extensive experience in mergers and acquisitions, and more than a dozen M&A have already benefited from his expertise.
As a SaaS expert, Thiyagarajan has worked for several international/global brands in India, such as Intuit. He also had more than four successful years running his own mobile startup company, which he founded in 2006. Later, in 2011, he joined the renowned American business software company Intuit as an innovation leader. During his time with Intuit, he served as a key team member at Bangalore’s offices, training engineers on design thinking as well as a lean startup to bring innovation to the company. Additionally, he worked on an accelerator program within the organization.
His overall goal is to help Indian founders gain a strong foothold in the global market. With that mission in mind, he also co-founded a startup think tank named "iSPIRT" to help Indian startups achieve success. Over the course of his career, he has successfully assisted more than 100 startups to get product market fit.
Partnering with Upekkha, the SaaS accelerator to give benefit to the SaaS startups in India
Thiyagarajan’s primary motive is to empower SaaS startups in India to have solid value. Far too often, founders are misled. They end up losing track of their business and not paying enough attention to building the foundation. This is exactly why he co-founded Upekkha, a SaaS accelerator exclusively for early-stage SaaS startups in India.
Upekkha is a much-needed platform for SaaS startup founders, as it provides them with holistic assistance to develop a value-based SaaS company as opposed to a Vanity SaaS. The platform notably offers coaching, community, and capital to the founders so that they can develop a capital-efficient business.
As a partner, Thiyagarajan contributes to the platform with his years of SaaS experience and knowledge. With his contribution, Upekkha provides the founders with a valuable coaching program, through which they learn about business development with customer capital so that they can have more optionality and maximize results.
Thiyagarajan has helped the very first cohort of Startups in Upekkha achieve a 100% success rate and cross the target of $1M in ARR. He has also consistently run founder programs with an 85+ NPS score over the last several years.
Upekkha has a huge impact on India's SaaS market
As Thiyagarajan already had experience with SaaS accelerators from his time at Intuit, he adds great value to Upekkha. He underlined that, as of now, 101 startups follow the route of Value Saas created by Upekkha. The platform has attained a strong brand market reputation and has been referred to as the "YC for SaaS".
The SaaS startups get all the required assistance from coaching to capital and in turn, they give equity stake to Upekkha.
Thiyagarajan highlighted that once a founder joins their community, they become part of it forever. Consequently, when founders need help with its business at the initial stage or after reaching their primary milestone, they can always look up to the Upekkha community. From capital to strategic support, it is all available!
The platform provides startups with seed stage capital. Furthermore, depending on the type of need, it supports them with either debt capital or a series A equity fund.
Upekkha’s new milestone
The company is currently about 18 months away from its next milestone - offering structured support for strategic partnerships and M&A. Currently, Upekkha is performing exceptionally well and it saw great profits in 2021. They raised a $10-million fund known as Up-fund and the accelerator itself has raised over $1m from India's top SaaS founders and investors.
What makes Upekkha different from its competitors?
Thiyagarajan emphasizes that Upekkha's approach makes it different from its competitors - the likes of YCombinator and Sequoia Surge. Upekkha focuses on the founder optionality whereas the competitors work on funding optionality.
Additionally, he highlights the Net Promoter Score (NPS) of Upekkha; the NPS score of 85 is proof that founders who are associated with this SaaS accelerator platform are extremely satisfied and happy with the outcomes. It also shows that they are likely to recommend Upekkha to upcoming SaaS startups.
Final words
Indian SaaS companies are amongst the best in the world. They have caught the attention of investors from both local and international markets. Thiyagarajan Maruthavanan is a SaaS expert and entrepreneur who is adding value to the Indian SaaS industry through Upekkha. With his contribution, the platform has already offered exclusive support and solutions to 100+ startups in the last five years and more are lined up!
