With neobanking fintech portal, Open, raising fresh capital to push its value to over a billion dollars, India celebrated its 100th unicorn. The Indian startup ecosystem indeed has had an excellent past few years. Remember, just five years ago. India had only 14 unicorns. The government has been successful in creating a favourable milieu for startups to sprout-out and thrive. The major wedge of the 100 belongs to Bangalore and Mumbai.

Understandably, most of them belong to the digital ecosystem.

According to the reports by NASSCOM and Gartner, the end-user spending on public cloud in India is likely to reach $7–$7.5 billion in 2022, growing 29.3 percent from 2021. The Indian software as-a-service (SaaS) industry has made the most of this favorable ecosystem. India is currently home to 17 SaaS unicorns, with the entry of companies like PostMan, MindTickle, Browserstack, and many others. In fact, Indian SaaS companies in particular are making a global impact. It is reported that the SaaS revenue is growing 20 percent every year globally and is expected to reach $300 billion by 2024.

So, what works so well for companies in the industry? It’s a common trait – most successful SaaS companies bank on a mature land-and-expand sales strategy. It implies that you should have a genuine strategy to grow your customers’ value and increase revenue through existing customers as a SaaS provider. Yes, it’s the genuine approach we are talking about, offering a suite of products to upsell or striving to draw more usage and thus pricing your product on usage. The organizations that can drive and increase revenues from their existing customers and products (rather than only by acquiring new customers) can thrive and unlock scale seamlessly. Products like Zoom, Slack, and Figma are great examples of success with productled growth strategies.