Tech spending is only going to get bigger and bigger from here. Indian companies operating from within the country and the United States are hoping to realise the full potential. The USISPF's Startup Connect initiative brings together Indian startups with the Valley playbook.

Uniphore, CRMNext and CloudCherry are three companies, which are not just leading the SaaS charge but have also invested in US-India Collaborative Future.

In an interview with Shereen Bhan, Umesh Sachdev, co-founder & CEO of speech recognition & conversational AI platform Uniphore, said, "Pandemic was terribly negative for people on the health front but for technology businesses, SaaS businesses it has turned the tide permanently."

"Sequoia came out with a note at the beginning of the pandemic that it is a black swan event, let's go in cash preservation mode, etc, but here we are, we have seen record in terms of financing both in the US and India, SaaS companies have seen their best year, growth rates are through the roof, customers can't get enough of technology, AI, automation and the fact that businesses like ours could continue working almost fully remote gave us the chance to thrive and not just survive in the pandemic. So pandemic was terribly negative for a lot of people on the health front but for technology businesses, SaaS businesses it turned the tide almost permanently."

Vinod Muthukrishnan, CEO of CloudCherry, said the pandemic has changed the consumption model completely.

"Consumption models have permanently changed because of the pandemic. You can now sell an enterprise software deal remotely, which was unfathomable 18 months ago. So when buying consumption and patterns shift, it brings to attention who is the best poised to capitalise. You cannot start a SaaS company in the middle of the pandemic and benefit from the tailwinds of it. So companies, which have been around before and have built that base are accelerating like never before."

Joe Salesky, CEO of CRMNext, said, "Pandemic was definitely a catalyst event. We invented web conferencing in 1994 yet it took something to cause people to work differently. So that really unplugged the opportunity to build enterprise relationships. We are at 40 percent year-on-year growth in a year when we couldn't see our customers in person. So you have huge opportunity for made in India because now borders are not an issue for electrons. So you have tremendous opportunity to uncork the potential of businesses."

Watch video for entire discussion.

(Edited by : Bivekananda Biswas)

First Published:Aug 17, 2021 8:34 PM IST