Chennai based TenMiles has launched HappyFox, a SAAS based support software. TenMiles, if you remember had a on-premise hosted solution, HelpDeskPilot and while that product continues to serve enterprise IT market, HappyFox is targeted towards SMBs who prefer cloud based solution.
Here is a QnA with Shalin Jain, founder of TenMiles:
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Transition from HelpDeskPilot to HappyFox – Can you walk us thru’ the entire journey?
We’ve been serving the Enterprise & SME market with Helpdesk Pilot for last 6 years. Helpdesk Pilot still continues to be available for organizations that need an Helpdesk system typically within their network. SaaS offering has been on our mind for last 3 years and we had decided to re-engineer the product for very high scalability. We’ve been in private beta for last 3-4 months and have a large number of paying customers already.
Why create another brand?
A lot of things are different: Our target segment, product use case, pricing and delivery.
Helpdesk Pilot is strongly established as an deployable enterprise product now. Also, Helpdesk Pilot has served a different market, for instance it caters to large group of Internal IT help desk requirements in banks, universities and many other large organizations besides being used for customer support by many other companies. Many features like LDAP integration is more important to enterprise segment than for a cloud based customer support software. An additional brand is a lot more work but over a long run it would be great for our customers.
What’s your sales model? Put it on the web, create buzz? Or have a direct sales/offline model as well?
Our Sales & Marketing efforts are largely Internet driven.
Zendesk recently announced SAAS for enterprise – and that’s a big competition (established one). What’s your target segment?
We’ve been serving similar markets for a very long time and win in my many areas when it comes to features and ease of use. Having said that, with HappyFox we are essentially targeting smaller and mid-sized companies. We are priced better and have a matured product with a no-nonsense workflow.
Most of the saas based support software have similar positioning (i.e. “Support Simplified”). What’s HappyFox’s USP?
HappyFox is the first true freemium cloud based customer support solution in the market. The product is feature-rich with great user-experience available at a very competitive price point.
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It’s interesting that Shalin shared interesting insights (on SAAS vs. Hosted solutions) in our last coverage of Helpdeskpilot:
Let’s not be silly to think a non-SaaS based product has no acceptance or wow-factor. There are plenty of reason why companies prefer non-hosted models and it is a great plus to have a product that can be deployed and can also be taken to the cloud.
Helpdesk Pilot can be used on the Intranet + Internet. So, it is a good for a internal IT Helpdesk use-case as well as good for customer service on the internet. Hence, the ability to deploy is great. Most top education institutes, banks, casinos prefer deployable models for the ability to customize and keep access/information strictly internal. It becomes highly affordable when you deploy a product – esp. with a product like Helpdesk Pilot that can be installed on any shared hosting service.
Besides, Helpdesk Pilot has been around for 4 years now. Extremely popular, profitable & great growth story. Of course, full blown SaaS would be a sweet extension of the product. For now, we can still host it for you.
What’s your take on the SAAS based support software? A lot of Indian startups are going after this space, as SAAS has leveled the playground for them (i.e. you do not need a physical sales team to sell the product).
Another startup in this space: FreshDesk.
Recommended Read: How to Price your SaaS Application – The Definitive Guide | How SAAS Pricing Plans Have Evolved Over a Period of Time
