From a Chennai Apartment to Global Leadership: The Chargebee Story

In June 2011, the world witnessed the launch of Chargebee, a company that offered software especially designed to support recurring revenue management for subscription-based businesses.

Ever since, Chargebee has been enabling these businesses to capture, retain, and maximize their revenue opportunities.

But how did a small idea go on to become a much-in-demand subscription and revenue growth platform?

Let’s find out. 

The Origins

It all began in 2002, when a young Bengaluru-based programmer, Krish Subramanian started recognizing the entrepreneur in him and decided to build his own company. 

After all, he comes from a family of entrepreneurs: His family ran restaurants and Krish only followed in his father’s footsteps, who took a sabbatical from his government job to fulfill his entrepreneurial aspirations.

As they say, the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree.

Krish studied at the AVC College of Engineering in Mayiladuthurai, a town in Tamil Nadu, when he started to find excuses to help with managing the restaurant. Or he’d be helping out at his uncle’s typewriting and photocopy center, so he could talk to customers and figure out what it takes to run a business.

Soon thereafter, Krish, along with his college friend (and now co-founder at Chargebee) Rajaraman Santhanam, found himself following HackerNews forums and companies like Fog Creek Software (creators of Trello) to study and track their growth. 

About 10 years later, Krish was working at MatexNet, the firm that Chargebee first incorporated as Bubblepath, Inc.

However, it was only after he worked with an entrepreneur at his first job that he realized that entrepreneurship was the way forward for him as well. 

Circa 2009, Krish was flourishing in his career, heading teams at TCS and Cognizant.

This was also the time when he was offered a long-term opportunity to continue his work in the US. This would mean investing around five-to-seven years in the task. However, Krish chose a different path for himself.

He returned to India and went on to build his own company instead.

After encountering several initial roadblocks, Rajaraman and Krish realized they needed a unique idea or a problem to solve to be successful. 

In the later half of 2010, they incorporated Bubblepath, Inc. with a vision of building a business together.

They were joined by Thiyagu, Rajaraman’s roommate, who was on a sabbatical from Zoho, a Chennai-based SaaS company.

The terrific trio put their heads together to come up with a viable product idea.

At this point, Saravanan KP (or KPS) who knew Rajaraman and Thiyagu from Zoho also joined the team.

This further bolstered their faith in their technical abilities and experience to solve bigger business problems.

Then came the much-needed boost in their confidence: the launch of Freshworks (erstwhile Freshdesk) in 2010.

How? Shan Krishnasamy, the co-founder of Freshworks, and Rajaraman had joined Zoho’s parent company AdventNet on the same day.

They had remained friends ever since and even lived in the same apartment complex. Little did they know at the time that

Freshworks would become a catalyst for Chargebee to find its feet, and become one of Chargebee’s first customers.

In 2011, the four aspiring entrepreneurs were ready to start their own global tech company.

The only problem?

They still had no clue what kind of business they wanted to start.

About this unusual approach, Krish looks back and says: “I didn’t care which problem we chose as long as we created a business that could scale.” He added, “KPS and Rajaraman came up with three ideas, and I agreed to pick one.”

They decided they wanted to provide solutions related to billing, “because everyone needs to get paid.”

As the subscription economy grew, the team went on to capitalize on the opportunity to simplify billing processes for companies, especially the start-ups and small businesses that needed reliable and affordable billing engines. 

Krish states, “In hindsight, we never should have started a business without doing any customer research or addressable market analysis.

We were very naïve, but luckily, we managed to draw on our collective experience to connect the right dots.”

In mid 2011, Chargebee came into existence. 

How Chargebee Started Taking Charge

With a few Indian and global customers in their kitty, the team continued to ponder over how big Chargeebee could become.

Most of their discussions revolved around the product and how they founded Chargebee.

But, they were yet to find an answer to the most important question:

• How would customers discover Chargebee and choose them over their competitors?
• Was Chargebee just offering transaction abstraction as a layer that would be set up for subscription businesses and then forgotten about?

It was clear that Chargebee was attempting to help Freshworks and many other businesses solve their problems.

However, this would become increasingly complex as these businesses grew, which is why they would be better off leaving it to the experts. Like Chargebee. 

From this point onwards, it became clear that Chargebee needed to target early-stage companies who were still setting up their processes.

In fact, this holds true for Chargebee even now. Their subscription management software is most helpful for new startups.

As the startup would grow, Chargebee would help them scale. Once this insight was gained, there was no looking back for Krish and his team.

Chargebee finally knew who they were and who they were meant for. 

Even when Chargebee made its first million dollars, Krish says, “It is not about where the next million in revenue is coming from.

It is getting the fundamentals right. And if we do, the wind will catch the sail, and there’s really no slowing down from there.”

Climbing the Ladder of Success

TechSparks describes itself as “the definitive platform for entrepreneurs to flex their ‘hustle muscle’ for connections, recognition and funding.”

In 2013, TechSparks listed Chargebee in their list of promising tech companies that have been shaping India’s startup ecosystem.

After all, it had gone from being a small team of around 10 people with 15-20 beta customers to becoming a company that processed over USD 50 million in customer revenue annually in two years. Of course, Krish and team were thrilled about it.

By 2015, Chargebee was a 30-member organization with hundreds of customers worldwide that included some of the fastest growing startups in SaaS and e-commerce.

To this Krish prudently opined, “If your startup is solving a globally relevant problem, going global is a no-brainer decision as you will find that the sales cycles are much shorter and customers are used to Do it Yourself (DIY) solutions.”

Some of his advice about going global with B2B solutions includes:

“1. It is much easier when you have the entire world to sell to, than a limited demography. Of course, it will stretch you in terms of time zones, but that is the fun.

2. Respond to enquiries in minutes and thrill them with detailed emails.

Let your passion come through with fairly detailed, helpful customer support rather than ‘salesy’ emails. Everyone loves a genuine helpful conversation.

This is the key to winning the trust of potential customers.

3. Invest in a clean, well-documented open API. Lots of customers like to read up & do the integration themselves. 

4. As an extension of that, build lots of tutorials, videos and help documentation. Facilitate and get out of the way. 

5. Measure engagement of everything, including videos using tools like Wistia. Google Analytics is your friend to understand which documents are being read most to clean up and fix things. 

6. Lot of us ignore the importance of investing in a clean TOS, Privacy Policy & good website copy. These small things matter a lot if you need to build trust. 

7. The most underestimated aspect is content marketing.

Creating educational original content for your target audience is the best way to build SEO & get your company before your potential customers. It all adds up over time. So start pushing engaging and useful content early.”

Chargebee, Razorpay, and Subscriptions

No one can deny that India has always been a huge market for businesses.

In 2022, it was reported that Indian SaaS companies would reach $30 billion in revenue by 2025. With subscription-based businesses on the rise and the launch of UPI AutoPay in India, recurring payments underwent a series of transformations. 

On these developments and opportunities, Krish said, “We were born in India, just four friends in a small apartment in Chennai thinking of how to solve a problem, and then cut our teeth in the US and Europe working with customers of all sizes to help them start and grow businesses.” 

In 2022, Chargebee announced a partnership with Razorpay, a Bengaluru-based full-stack financial solutions provider, to offer subscription billing services in India. 

When speaking about the partnership, Rahul Kothari, Chief Business Officer at Razorpay, said, “With an intent to further grow the subscription economy, we are pleased to partner with Chargebee, a company that’s emerging to be a global pioneer in subscription payments.”

The intent behind this partnership was clear and perfectly put across by Rajaraman when he mentioned, “By building a solution specific to the needs in the region, we are proud to offer an end-to-end billing solution that can integrate with APIs, tax services, payment gateways and more to bolster India’s booming SaaS economy.”

Today, Chargebee works with several businesses ranging from startups to public companies, including Freshworks, Kissflow, TVS Motor Company, Synup, and CleverTap. 

Rebranding from Subscription Business to Revenue Growth Management

“Everything that we have built is based on learning from customers. We come to understand what our fastest-growing customers need two years in the future and then continue to keep pace with them. Our vision is to provide a solution that ensures customers do not outgrow Chargebee.” 

• Krish Subramanian, CEO & Co-founder, Chargebee

Chargebee acquired many new products, such as RevRec, Receivables, Retention, as well as released core Billing features, including pricing entitlements, mobile subscriptions, and advanced multi-entity support over the years 2021 and 2022. 

In 2024, the company emphasized its vision to “automate and enable revenue growth management through the subscriber lifecycle” through a complete rebranding. 

What did this mean? Apart from a “brand new look and feel,” Chargebee became a Revenue Growth Management (RGM) platform for subscription businesses.

The platform would now accelerate crucial business functions, such as customer acquisition, growth and retention, scaling of financial operations, enabling business-critical integrations, and more. 

According to Krish, the transformation into a Revenue Growth Management company was “a distillation of everything that the Chargebee team has been working towards, and we are excited that it represents the larger set of problems on a wider canvas that we can now solve for our customers.”

Leader In 2024 Gartner Magic Quadrant for Recurring Billing Applications

Chargebee added yet another feather to its cap when it was named a Leader in the 2024 Gartner inaugural report of recurring billing applications.

Reacting to this, Krish said, “We believe this recognition underscores the primary role of our finance and growth automation platform in addressing the complex invoicing, compliance, integration, and revenue acceleration needs of modern, global B2B and B2C businesses.”

Wrapping Up

In the late 2000s, four friends envisioned creating a product that would solve the evolving challenges in the world of subscription billing.

Today, their vision and hard work have culminated in a leading global organization that has revolutionized subscription and billing solutions.

Chargebee is a fine example of a thriving business that identified an existing gap in the market and found an innovative way to close it.

The company stands true to its tagline: “Craft the future: powered by subscription revenue.” It is trusted by 6,500+ merchants and serves 227 countries and territories.

In a nutshell, Chargebee has grown from strength to strength as it continues to navigate strategically and leave an indelible mark in the global revenue management arena.