India’s bootstrapped SaaS startups flirt with funding

When Sparsh Gupta and Paras Chopra founded Wingify in 2009, they weren’t wedded to the idea of bootstrapping the software-as-a-service (SaaS) firm. With the business effectively being profitable from its inception, Gupta and Chopra had multiple conversations with investors during the firm’s first five years. Ultimately, though, they chose to remain bootstrapped.

Despite the lack of external funding, Wingify has gone from strength to strength over the years. After clocking profits of Rs 60 crore on revenues of Rs 200 crore in the year ended March 2022, Wingify announced in May 2022 that it had hit an annual recurring revenue of $30 million.  

Wingify is far from the only Indian SaaS startup that bootstrapped its way to big things. In fact, Chennai-headquartered Zoho, which began life as AdventNet in 1996, practically created the blueprint for bootstrapping an Indian SaaS company. Last November, it hit $1 billion in annual global revenue. Another notable bootstrapped success is martech player Netcore, which achieved a revenue run rate of $95 million last year.