Customer relationship management (CRM) service provider Salesforce.com (News - Alert) is looking at rapid India expansion in 2008 through its subscription-based CRM software, and is hoping it'll grow into a $160 million revenue market there by 2010.

 

"India is the fastest growing SaaS (News - Alert) market in Asia Pacific. There are over 70 lakh Small and Medium Businesses which are underserved which is our opportunity," company Vice President Operations Asia Pacific Doug Farber said.

 

For those not familiar, "lakh" means "hundred thousand."

 

A recent study by research firm Springboard cited by Salesforce officials found that early adopters of SaaS in India are not small companies, but medium and large ones. In more mature markets one would expect the opposite. The study found "ease of use" and "low cost of ownership" as frequently-cited reasons for adoption.

 

India was found to be a cost sensitive market, with only 13 per cent users being not aware of savings accrued from SaaS, compared to an astounding 92 per cent in Australia and New Zealand and 80 per cent in Singapore.

 

Currently Salesforce gets about seven per cent of its revenues from the Asia Pacific Market, with India second in region marketing. Globally the company has over 38,000 customers and 10 lakh subscribers.

 

A couple weeks ago Salesforce.com announced it will reach its next major milestone this month, surpassing one million paying subscriptions on its award-winning service.

 

Company officials say they'll achieve this milestone due to the industry momentum and customer adoption of the Force.com Platform and Salesforce CRM application suite, which has expanded from four to six applications with the addition of Salesforce Content and Salesforce Ideas.

 

Additionally, there has been rapid adoption of the developer preview of Visualforce as more than 3,400 developers already have created more than 5,800 custom interfaces with the new User-Interface-as-a-Service component of the Force.com platform.

 

Marc Benioff (News - Alert), chairman and CEO and a man never at a loss for words, said it took seven years to reach the first 500,000 paying subscribers "and only another 16 months for the second 500,000. That's incredible global momentum and adoption for businesses of all sizes. For a million subscribers around the world, it's truly The End of Software."

 

Last month Salesforce.com reported a 74 percent increase in net income for the third quarter, aided by a 48 percent surge in revenues.