Software-as-a-service (SaaS) platform for frontline workforce management BetterPlace has shifted its strategy to focus on large traditional enterprises where low technology penetration presents a big market opportunity, away from new-age businesses earlier.
The business contribution from new-age companies has shrunk from 100% in 2022 to about 35% this year, according to a senior executive at the Bengaluru-based firm.
Pravin Agarwala, founder and CEO of the company, said it will further reduce to 10% by the end of the year, with most of the focus moving towards traditional enterprises.
The two reasons, according to Agarwala, for the pivot are a bigger market and a deeper need. “New-age companies adopt really fast because they start with technology, but the need for technology is large in traditional companies because they are not used to using our homegrown technology that much. The large enterprises might grow 10%-15% year on year, but they keep on growing. While in the new-age ones, we grow really fast, but there are also dips at times.”
He noted that the demand is growing in retail, manufacturing, BFSI, and telecom and all the other industries combined together there, but there is a dip in some of the new-age businesses where they were making a lot more investment, a lot more expenses earlier.
“They’re saying, hey, let me wait for a couple of more months, see what’s happening with the market, with the fundraisers and so on and they are taking a quarter or two quarters more. So, especially companies that are dependent heavily on large funding are taking longer to make the decisions.”
Founded in 2015, BetterPlace delivers digital solutions for blue-collar workforce management and is backed by investors like Jungle Ventures and Unitus Ventures. It last raised $40 million in an extended Series C round in December 2022, pegging its valuation between $500 million and $700 million.
Agarwala also mentioned that there is a slowdown in the SaaS market, as companies have become cautious about cash preservation but it has worked in BetterPlace’s favour as it helps them cut costs and bring efficiency. “If you look at the global market, people are taking longer than they used to take from a decision-making point of view because of the funding winter, the uncertainties and so on. But fortunately for us, we are in a segment, which is starving of technology. So, they all delay these decisions so that they can preserve cash. In our case, they want to make these decisions because they want to save cash.”
In the last quarter itself, the company added 25 large companies as customers, he said. “Typically, you end up adding about 15 enterprise grade customers in a year, so this shows that the adoption is growing,” said Agarwala.
The company’s large focus for the next two years will remain India and Southeast Asia, according to Agarwala. “We want to explore our market in Dubai and Saudi. Saudi being the growth lever of the Middle East and perhaps a large part of the world as well…Outside these markets, we will do business only through partnerships. So, we are doing a partnership in the US where we launch joint products. It’s a product-led partnership, not a retail or reseller partnership. So we will have a joint offering of products. That is what we’ll do in the US and perhaps the European market as well.”
The company’s profitability goal, according to Agarwala, is to be Ebitda positive by the end of December, across all business lines and all geographies and achieve net profitability by early Q2 next year.
This article was originally published on Mint >
