Chargebee is a SaaS company founded in 2011. In 2022, it experienced the worst volatility. With a capitalization of $3.5 billion, a 1.5 times increase from the previous fundraising round, it started the year on a bright note.
It has raised nearly $250 million from financiers led by Tiger Global and Sequoia. Nine months later, he cut staff in an effort to cut costs and increase productivity.
In some other SaaS companies, deductions have been made with Chargebi. Global SaaS powerhouses such as Salesforce, Zendesk, and Freshworks have cut staff to prevent labor intensive hiring whenever process slowdowns occur.
Chargebi co-founder Krish Subramanian, in his first interview with Moneycontrol’s Chandra R Srikanth and Bhavya Dilipkumar, dismissed speculation of a low round or sell-off, citing a decline since the announcement of the deal and what would slow down the company’s growth.
Krish Subramanian, Founder, Chargebi
Edited quotes:
What is your advice to young SaaS founders? Can you share your playbook for surviving in 2023 when macroeconomic conditions are tough?
The first point is that the community is bigger than the person. If you intend to fight for the survival of the organization, or at least, many choices must be made, such as opportunities, such as layoffs.
However, if I can give one piece of advice, it is to avoid being in the dark and hope that the market dynamics will miraculously improve. Each of us can only do two things: base our scenario planning on things we can control (like hard numbers and consumer perception) and take charge of our own destiny.
Is layoff the last resort? Did Chargebee take other steps before considering layoffs?
You can reduce your sales and marketing expenses, but if you want to increase your customer base, you need to invest in tried and true strategies like promotions and other things. As an additional internal variable you can reduce your salary costs. But if you cut wages for your best employees, you may find yourself in a situation where you lose a lot of your best employees. At that time we have to choose deliberately.
Is an IPO still on the cards? Is the timeline set?
If you analyze our financial history, most of our investors and all the contributions were made after 2018. So, in terms of time horizon, there is no particular compulsion to say, “Oh, we have to exit soon.”
There is no set schedule for the IPO. Some judgments are based on market conditions.
