Salesforce.Com targets rapid India expansion with SaaS CRM

Mumbai, Dec 16, 2007 (Asia Pulse Data Source via COMTEX) -- CRM | charts | news | PowerRating -- Global customer relationship management (CRM) service provider Salesforce.Com is looking at rapid India expansion in 2008 through its 'subscription-based' CRM software, a concept which is likely to grow into a USD 160 million revenue market here by 2010.

Software as a service (SaaS) is a model where a vendor develops a web-native software application, hosts and operates it for use by its customers over the Internet.

Customers do not pay for owning the software itself but rather for using it like subscribers.

"India is the fastest growing SaaS market in Asia Pacific. There are over 70 lakh Small and Medium Businesses which are underserved which is our opportunity," company Vice President Operations Asia Pacific Doug Farber said.

As per a study by leading global research firm Springboard, the early adopters of SaaS in India are not small companies but medium and large ones as opposed to mature markets.

The ease of use and the low cost of ownership has led entrepreneurs to adopt SaaS, the research found.

India was also a cost sensitive market and only 13 per cent users being not aware of savings accrued from SaaS compared to 92 per cent in Australia and New Zealand and 80 per cent in Singapore.

Salesforce has about 7 per cent of its revenues coming from the Asia Pacific Market and India stands at number two in region marketing. Globally the company has over 38,000 customers and 10 lakh subscribers.

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