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Episode 123 · Enterprise · 58 min

A system of execution, not of record

LeadSquared's bet is that enterprises don't need another database — they need the seam between the ones they already own. One customer was pulling 15,000 leads a month off its own website and working none of them. Prashant Singh built a company in that gap, kept it profitable and self-funded, and did it in the one market every VC had written off.

SaaS & enterprise Sales, GTM & growth Healthcare

Prashant Singh

Co-founder, LeadSquared · with Vishal Krishna

57:30

Said in this episode

▶ 5:36

15,000/mo

Website leads nobody was working

At one enterprise customer LeadSquared onboarded, roughly 15,000 leads a month arrived from the website and simply sat there — the capture system was never wired to the distribution system.

▶ 38:28

~75%

Share of revenue that still comes from India

As stated on air; asked whether it settles at 60% India and 40% US, he says it could, and he'd take that bet.

▶ 39:10

India's insurance penetration

His shorthand for why BFSI is the segment to chase — insurance barely penetrated, lending 'just starting', and SIP flows rising every month.

▶ 46:58

5–10%

Productivity gain from internal AI experiments

Measured across teams experimenting with generative AI on research, content and code quality; he expects the number to go higher.

▶ 21:44

₹50 cr+

Where his mid-market starts

Roughly $6 million in revenue — the size band for the US career colleges and Indian mid-market accounts he targets; in India he puts the D2C sweet spot at ₹100 crore-plus in sales.

▶ 53:13

2,000 / 400

Books at home, versus books read

He buys four or five books a month and keeps them whether or not he gets to them — the backlog, he says, is for a retirement about twenty years out.

The brief

The argument in sixty seconds

Prashant Singh's claim is that business software gets reimagined every decade, and that 2013's reimagining was forced by consumers: a CRM that opens with an account and a company means nothing to a fintech or an edtech talking to one person at a time. LeadSquared's answer was not another system of record but what he calls a system of workflow — capture every lead, distribute it intelligently, and tell the salesperson what to do next. The evidence he offers is embarrassingly plain: one sophisticated enterprise was collecting 15,000 leads a month from its own website and working none of them, because the system that caught the lead was never wired to the system that could act on it. Two arguments follow. The first is that America is a full replacement market where you cannot out-shout the gorilla, so you pick underserved verticals — for-profit career colleges, the front door of healthcare — in which the incumbent vendor is a small shop with a hundred customers and dated, off-cloud software. The second is India, the market every VC discounted: LeadSquared stayed profitable and largely self-funded through the years when nobody believed India could be a sizable SaaS market, still draws roughly 75% of revenue from here, and is betting that BFSI, hospitals and a manufacturing sector waking up to D2C keep it that way. The stakes are whether an Indian software company can reach hundreds of millions in revenue without moving its centre of gravity west.

Worth your time if you are

Revenue leaders whose leads die between two systems

Indian SaaS founders planning a US entry

Bootstrappers arguing with VCs about the India market

BFSI and hospital operators buying sales software

Hiring managers weighing freshers against AI gains

Episode map

Where the conversation travels

Every block is a chapter, coloured by what it's about. Click any of it to jump straight to that minute on YouTube.

SaaS & enterpriseSales, GTM & growthHealthcarePayments & fintechIndia macroHiring & talent

01Cold open: why the square in LeadSquared 0:00 Vishal frames the hour — US expansion, India as the bigger opportunity, BFSI and healthcare — before Prashant explains the name: lead plus square, the function that turns a negative positive and makes growth exponential, and a .com that was actually available. 02The 2013 case for reimagining CRM 1:51 Called a late entrant into a market that already had CRMs and CDPs, he argues business software is reimagined every decade — and the consumer internet of 2013 needed data structures built for a person, not for an account and a company. 03Fifteen thousand leads, nobody working them 5:04 An unnamed enterprise customer was receiving around 15,000 leads a month from its website and touching none of them — systems existed but were never connected, which is why LeadSquared sells itself as a system of workflow rather than a system of record. 04The buyer moves from CMO to CSO 7:35 The boardroom question is always which ad spend produced which contract; the first sale was to a CMO, but the cheque has shifted to the chief sales officer who carries the target, with the CIO gatekeeping in regulated industries. 05America is a full replacement market 10:20 Nobody in the US is buying this software for the first time, and naming the gorilla you claim to beat is a marketing budget you don't have — so the play is narrow verticals where the incumbent vendor is a small, unfunded shop running dated, off-cloud software. 06Healthcare's back end works, its front door doesn't 12:38 Patients now have choices, so centres compete for them; electronic health records are a well-built system of record, but almost nothing has been built for the stretch from discovery to a booked appointment — HIPAA compliance and a roughly three-month sales cycle included. 07Capture, enrich, assign, book the appointment 15:37 The patient journey as workflow — chatbot, form or phone call captured, data enriched from internal and third-party sources, the right counsellor assigned — plus India's twist: one family sharing the father's phone number, and hospitals predicting the care a 45-year-old will need in twenty years. 08Spam, cadence and the art of it 18:52 Marketing chiefs drown in unqualified digital leads while daily WhatsApp blasts get them blocked; his counter is contextual timing — a reminder a week before your health-check anniversary — and a customer success team that designs the cadence, because this is art as much as science. 09Career colleges: underserved and for-profit 21:24 American for-profit career and higher-education colleges are a mid-market segment — ₹50 crore-plus in Indian terms, around $6 million — that already knows it wants software, is ignored by the largest vendors, and is served by small players who cannot innovate. 10The market every VC had discounted 23:20 Funding was a conscious choice, not an accident: having built and sold a business before, they ran on revenue and profit from day one — and the VCs they did meet weren't keen, because India was discounted by everybody as a place a SaaS company could be built. 11CAC after the cheque; SaaS is still service 25:30 Acquisition cost rose once America became a market to build rather than sell into, but the standalone core stayed profitable and the new spending is capital expenditure in disguise — and since sales is the department no company defunds, the business is inherently viable. 12Cement, carpenters and the D2C pinch of salt 28:30 A cement company spending ₹100 crore on advertising wants the sales attribution, so masons and carpenters become tracked influencers carrying a LeadSquared-powered app — while the ₹100-billion D2C forecast gets taken with salt, since brands stuck at one or two crore rarely scale and established firms with a D2C arm are likelier to win. 13BFSI: broking, lending and intrusive follow-ups 35:18 Financial services are the most advanced consumers of this technology — NBFCs, insurers and most of the top broking names, Angel One among them, running the journey from interest to account opening — set against India's hundred-calls-a-lead norm and the consulting work of building cadences that don't feel like harassment. 14Seventy-five percent India, and the macro bet 38:06 Roughly three-quarters of revenue still comes from India and he'd take a 60/40 India-US split as the destination, on a macro case of GDP growth against declining Western markets, 3% insurance penetration, lending barely started, and savings rotating out of gold and property into the capital markets. 15Educated but not employable; AI's five to ten percent 43:20 Candidates from top engineering institutes interview as merely average, so the company hires on aptitude and attitude and trains the skills itself — while AI experiments across teams already show 5-10% productivity gains, and India's thin open-source and pure-research contribution is the thing that makes him genuinely sad. 16Services pays, product satisfies; and 2,000 books 50:38 He wouldn't sell his old IT services company again — it was a cash cow — but it becomes a staffing business with money and no intellectual satisfaction; then the other half of the man: 2,000 books at home, roughly 400 read, Hindi literature he wants to translate, Peter Drucker, and Gödel on the incompleteness of mathematics.

Takeaways

Ideas to carry out of this hour

Consumer businesses broke the CRM's data model

Business software has always been built for B2B use cases, and a CRM that starts with an account and a company doesn't resonate for an edtech or a fintech that is talking to one human being. Consumer-facing companies have simple data structures, enormous lead volumes and very nimble processes — and putting complicated software on top of a simple, fast process simply doesn't work. His broader rule: every decade, the way people consume software changes, and business software has to be reinvented for it.

▶ 2:35 ▶ 3:35 ▶ 4:03

The gap isn't the software, it's the seam between software

One enterprise customer was receiving around 15,000 leads a month from its own website with nobody working on them. These businesses look sophisticated and they do own systems — one to capture the lead, another to call, another to email — but the systems sit in different departments and were never connected, so the lead never reaches the person who could close it. Connect those systems, or supply the workflow that connects the data, and half the battle is won.

▶ 5:36 ▶ 6:05 ▶ 6:35

The cheque moved from the CIO to the sales chief

The first sale went to a CMO; today the decisive stakeholder is the chief sales officer, because whoever carries the number insists on choosing the tool that will hit it. CIOs still matter — in regulated industries they own compliance and security and can veto — but the recommendation that gets taken is the sales officer's. The underlying problem the software sells against is visibility: marketing believes it contributes, sales believes it doesn't, and nobody can trace a signed contract back to the money spent to source it.

▶ 8:35 ▶ 9:21 ▶ 10:05

In America you don't out-shout the gorilla, you replace the dated incumbent

The US is a full replacement market — nobody is buying this category for the first time — and positioning yourself against the 800-pound gorilla means buying brand recall at American marketing prices. LeadSquared's route in is narrow: pick verticals like for-profit career colleges and healthcare front-ends, then find the small software vendors sitting on a hundred customers with products that never made it to cloud because they couldn't raise money or innovate. Demand already exists and is underserved; you arrive with newer, scalable software and take the seat.

▶ 10:49 ▶ 11:20 ▶ 11:52

Healthcare's system of record is solved; its front door is not

Patients now know they have choices — a different centre, an online consultation — so healthcare centres compete for them, and competition means process, and process means software. Electronic health records are a mature backend system of record; almost no work has gone into the front end that runs from a patient discovering a centre to actually turning up for the appointment. That's the wedge, HIPAA compliance and all, and in India it forces its own problems: an entire family booking on the father's phone number, and hospitals wanting to predict the care a 45-year-old will need over the next twenty years.

▶ 13:54 ▶ 14:09 ▶ 17:54

The VCs were right that India is hard, wrong that it is small

They talked to a number of VCs and found little appetite, because the company's focus was India and India had been discounted by everybody as a SaaS market — a scepticism Vishal confirms hearing from leaders at SaaSBoomi in 2018-19. Prashant half-concedes the point: not many software companies have succeeded selling into India, and plenty have burnt their hands. But LeadSquared still takes roughly 75% of its revenue from India, and he'd bet on a 60/40 India-US split as the steady state, on a macro case of insurance at 3% penetration, lending barely begun, and household savings rotating out of gold and real estate into the capital markets.

▶ 24:12 ▶ 24:42 ▶ 38:28

Growth capital is capital expenditure in disguise

The company was profitable before it raised, and acquisition cost rose afterwards for a specific reason: entering America means paying to build a market, not merely to sell into one. He treats that spending — global capability, new products, new centres — as capex that financial statements don't label as capex, while the standalone core business remains more or less profitable. The reason he thinks the model holds: sales is the one department nobody defunds, so even if AI improves its efficiency, the budget gets redeployed rather than cut.

▶ 25:58 ▶ 26:30 ▶ 27:48

Educated but not employable — and now AI raises the floor

Interviewing candidates from top engineering institutes, he finds them very average, and the degree factories behind them are, in Vishal's phrase, a paid vacation. So the company hires for fundamentals, aptitude and attitude, screens freshers with a rigorous written assessment, and supplies the skills itself. AI sharpens the same point — shallow work is no longer acceptable because a model can do it — while internal experiments already show 5-10% productivity gains. His unfinished business is research: India's contribution to open source is much smaller than other countries', and he wants to start a small R&D arm, a couple of PhDs, rather than keep following what the US builds.

▶ 44:58 ▶ 46:58 ▶ 48:28

The numbers, drawn

What the episode measures

Every figure below was said on air — timestamps included, caveats kept.

Conversation share

portion of the hour spent on each theme

SaaS & enterprise24%

Sales, GTM & growth18%

Healthcare12%

Payments & fintech10%

India macro10%

Hiring & talent9%

Computed from the chapter map of this episode.

The India share, now and next

% of revenue

As stated on air: roughly 75% of revenue comes from India today; asked whether the split settles at 60% India and 40% US, Prashant says it could and he'd take that bet.▶ 38:28

Bought, and actually read

books

His own count, said on air — four or five books bought every month, about 2,000 at home, roughly 400 read; the rest, he jokes, are for a retirement twenty years away.▶ 53:13

Worth keeping

Lines that stay

Instead of being a system of record, we are a system of workflow, a system of execution.

— Prashant Singh ▶ 7:30

The US is a full replacement market — everybody has something. You cannot just say, this is my 800-pound gorilla competition and I'm better than this.

— Prashant Singh ▶ 10:55

The India market has been discounted by everybody. Nobody believed India can become a sizable SaaS market.

— Prashant Singh ▶ 24:15

I get very sad when I see that in open source projects our contribution is much, much lesser compared to other countries. Doing pure R&D should also be a priority.

— Prashant Singh ▶ 48:30

Unless you are yourself involved in the programming, in the delivery, it becomes more like a staffing business. You get money, but you don't get that intellectual satisfaction.

— Prashant Singh ▶ 52:20

Clips that travel

Short on time? Start here

Revenue leaders auditing their own lead flow

Fifteen thousand leads nobody called

The anecdote the whole company rests on — a sophisticated enterprise losing 15,000 leads a month between two systems that were never connected.

5:04 → 7:50 · 3 min ▶ Watch clip

Indian SaaS founders planning a US entry

Entering America without naming the gorilla

Why a full replacement market punishes head-on positioning, and how to find verticals where the incumbent vendor stopped innovating.

10:20 → 12:35 · 2 min ▶ Watch clip

Hospital and health-system operators

Healthcare's broken front door

Patients discovered choice, so centres compete — and everything from discovery to a booked appointment is still unbuilt on top of a mature EHR backend.

12:38 → 17:10 · 5 min ▶ Watch clip

Manufacturing and D2C marketers chasing attribution

Carpenters, cement and the ₹100 crore question

The most vivid stretch: masons and carpenters as tracked influencers on an app, and a cement company trying to tie ad spend to dealership sales.

29:58 → 33:15 · 3 min ▶ Watch clip

Anyone tired of the same five startup books

Two thousand books, Premchand and Gödel

The unicorn CEO who reads Hindi literature, wants to translate it, and is currently working through a proof that mathematics is incomplete.

52:55 → 56:40 · 4 min ▶ Watch clip

Glossary

The jargon, unpacked

CRM

Customer relationship management software — traditionally a system of record built around accounts and companies, which is exactly the assumption Prashant argues consumer-facing businesses break.

CDP

Customer data platform — the layer that unifies customer data from many sources; present alongside CRMs since before 2013, but rarely connected to the systems that actually work a lead.

System of record vs system of workflow

A system of record stores what happened; a system of workflow distributes the lead, tells the salesperson what to do next and drives it to a close — LeadSquared's stated positioning.

BFSI

Banking, financial services and insurance — the Indian shorthand for the segment he calls the most advanced consumer of this technology, spanning NBFCs, insurers, brokers and fintech lenders.

EHR

Electronic health record — the mature backend system hospitals already run, which handles almost nothing of the patient's journey before the appointment is booked.

HIPAA

The US law governing patient health data; compliance with it (and its equivalents) is table stakes before any software can touch an American healthcare workflow.

CAC

Customer acquisition cost — what it costs to win one customer; his rose after fundraising because entering America means paying to build a market, not just to sell into one.

CASA

Current account, savings account — the commodity banking product he says can no longer differentiate a new bank, which is why he expects neobanks to compete on credit or on experience.

Connections

If this resonated, go here next

EP 118 · Enterprise

Full transcript

The whole conversation, searchable

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