How Chargebee changed its DNA to target enterprises

The ongoing funding winter has forced companies across industries and vintages to apply the brakes and re-strategise. Software-as-a-service player Chargebee was no exception. The Chennai-born revenue growth management platform has had to change tact since small businesses—which were its bread and butter—have struggled due to the slowdown in funding.

While Chargebee had already been working on attracting larger companies over the past few years, these developments forced it to go all in on servicing these larger players who haven’t been as badly affected by market conditions. This shift, though, wasn’t so simple. The company has had to re-strategise and change the way it operates over the past 12-18 months to attract more deep-pocketed clients.

“Around 7-8 years ago, our largest deals were $12,000 per annum. Now, we are consistently closing a lot more six-figure deals,” Krish Subramanian, co-founder and CEO of Chargebee, tells The CapTable. Some of Chargebee’s older customers, such as SaaS major Freshworks, have also grown in size over the years and are now categorised in the enterprise segment as well. All this has seen the enterprise segment, which accounted for just around 10% of Chargebee’s revenue two years ago, now contributing nearly a third of the company’s earnings.