The Hub Bengaluru: Mapping YC-Backed SaaS Companies for Market Intelligence
Scanned and segmented YC-backed SaaS companies by business model to identify prospective clients and understand VC investment trends.
Siddharth Suresh
Junior Analyst - Business Operations at Razorpay
From their time as
Public Relation Strategy Intern
The Hub Bengaluru • 2022 - 2023
Overview
During his internship at The Hub Bengaluru, Siddharth was tasked with building a market intelligence database of Y Combinator-backed SaaS companies for a given fiscal year. The goal was to identify which companies were attracting VC attention, understand their business models, and assess which ones could be prospective clients for the platform.
The Story
During his internship at The Hub Bengaluru, Siddharth was tasked with building a market intelligence database of Y Combinator-backed SaaS companies for a given fiscal year. The goal was to identify which companies were attracting VC attention, understand their business models, and assess which ones could be prospective clients for the platform.
He scanned news sources, Google Alerts, and public databases regularly, cataloguing companies and segmenting them by SaaS category: marketing SaaS, financial SaaS, and others. For each company, he documented the target audience, funding stage, key metrics, and growth ambitions.
One company he spent significant time on was Cheq, an early-stage Indian fintech app focused on expense tracking and credit card management. He researched the founder through interviews and public content, mapped the company's target audience, and identified that Cheq's core problem was visibility: the product was solving a real need but had limited public awareness.
He compiled the research into a pitch deck and presented it to Cheq's founders, proposing that The Hub's social media reach could help educate the market on what Cheq did and build the founder's personal brand. The pitch landed Cheq as one of the platform's first financial SaaS clients.