US-based G2 is a unicorn software marketplace, revolutionizing the way software is bought and sold worldwide. The company has already has 10% of its global customer base from India and a fourth of its employees in Bangalore working on global product development, G2’s APAC headquarters. Techstory caught up with G2’s co-founder and CEO, Godard Abel, on the sidelines of his visit to Bangalore for the inauguration of their new facility and the annual G2 Live 3.0 conference for the SaaS fraternity in India. In this freewheeling chat, Godard reveals why AI powered software marketplace G2, with certified user reviews, is driving software investments now and in future.
1. What makes you believe that the marketplace model for software buying is a winning proposition? It does not make sense for large corporations with years of established software credentials and presence worldwide.
The way B2B buyers research software has fundamentally changed. Mirroring consumer-like shopping behaviors, B2B software buyers now conduct their own research online and seek out reviews and feedback from trusted sources – including authentic customer reviews. In fact, 69% of software buyers globally say they usually engage a salesperson only when they have already made a purchasing decision.
Regardless of a SaaS vendor’s size – from SMB through enterprise – when a buyer is in-market to purchase a new software product, it’s crucial to be discovered on the channels buyers are using for their own self-serve research. Considering that 16% of buyers start their software purchasing journey on G2, with 74% discovering G2 during their research process, any software vendor not appearing on G2 is missing out. While larger vendors have the brand recognition smaller vendors may not, they still will want to be discoverable during the research phase to ensure they can not only be considered, but also differentiate themselves from others in their category to make it onto a buyer’s short list.
Based on the 95/5 rule, it’s believed that just 5% of a company’s ideal customer profile is in-market at any given time. Being able to know when a potential customer is actively shopping for the software you provide is incredibly valuable. It helps prevent the broad spray and pray approach marketing and sales teams too often rely on, which is not only inefficient but frustrates customers and prospects. Vendors in G2’s marketplace have the opportunity to benefit from our Buyer Intent data, providing visibility into which buyers are in that magic 5% – those who are currently researching their G2 Profile, their competitors, or their software category more broadly. Armed with this insight, vendors can focus more precisely on the buyers who are actively researching software and more likely to convert. It’s a win-win when buyers can quickly find the best software for their business needs and vendors can engage with their target buyers at the right moment when they’re searching.
2. What are the AI capabilities that you have specifically added to your model? What kind of revenue lift have you seen in the recent past?
Built on OpenAI’s ChatGPT, G2 launched “Monty,” the first AI-powered business software advisor in April 2023. Monty makes it easy to search far and wide for software on G2 by analyzing buyer needs to suggest suitable solution options, saving time and money. Beyond his role as an impartial software advisor, Monty expanded his skills in additional roles: serving as a dedicated customer support agent for G2’s clientele, an expert in sales prospecting and lead generation as a powerful chatbot on G2 product profiles and external websites, a visionary in software market intelligence, and more.
When it comes to the impact of Monty, here’s what we have seen:
- ‘Software recommender Monty’ has been having approximately 6,000 conversations each week with software buyers researching solutions on G2. And he’s clearly helping as 30% of people who talk to Monty end up converting in some way (booking a demo, filling out a form, using G2 lead functionality, etc.).
- Prospects who chat with ‘Monty for Sales’ are 30x more likely to book a demo.
- One customer even grew ROI 70x annually through Monty-sourced pipeline.
- Additionally, Monty helped one customer save 100 hours of sales prospecting time every month.
Separate from Monty, we’ve also introduced a number of AI-powered features for streamlined researching reviews on G2.com and are continuing to experiment with how AI can improve both the buyer and seller experience on G2. A few of these new features include:
- Pros & Cons: G2 Profiles and product categories now feature Pros and Cons to help buyers distill software reviews into critical insights, with the ability to filter reviews grouped by contextual themes. Leveraging AI, we conduct thorough sentiment analysis and provide advanced filtering capabilities, helping buyers learn more about the category and product — while delving deeper into themes that are most important to their purchase decisions and filtering out the noise.
- Category Snippets: Category Snippets provide product overviews with pros and cons extracted from user reviews. Derived at the Product-level using AI, Snippets insights directly relate to the reviews of the product — compared to Pros and Cons insights (above feature) deriving at the Category-level, which are based on themes and paint a more broad picture of the product as it relates to multiple categories.
- Review Depth Checklist: Powered by ChatGPT, the new Review Depth Checklist on the G2 review form encourages reviewers to discuss specific topics we know other buyers are searching for. Here’s how it works: as a reviewer is typing their response to the “love and hate” questions on the review form, an AI prompt analyzes the text behind the scenes to determine if any of the copy meets the checklist criteria. Then, in real-time, a topic in the checklist will be marked complete if the user covers that topic in their response.
Other ways we are thinking about the role of AI in our marketplace include expanding our taxonomy to add new AI products, vendors, and categories. We’ve also introduced new feature questions for reviews, so we can capture insights about the way people are using AI in their software products. Lastly, while G2 does not allow AI-generated reviews in our marketplace, we do allow AI tools to improve grammar and readability of reviews. Our moderation team uses a mix of AI detection tools and human analysis to reject any reviews that do not meet our guidelines for authenticity.
3. What are your expectations from India? You have been here since 2019, share early success indicators?
In 2019, G2 opened its Asia Pacific headquarters in the burgeoning tech hub of Bengaluru, India. Since then, the team has thrived, growing to 160+ employees. In 2023, G2 was even named among India’s most visionary and evolved organizations by the Economic Times as part of their Future Ready Organization Awards. In 2024, G2 was certified as a Great Place to Work & also a GCC Workplace Awards winner in 2 categories (Top 6 in Diversity & Inclusion; Top 24 in 2024).
We continue to see momentum in India and from the APAC region. This is evidenced by our “Best Indian Software Companies” list as more software leaders emerge from APAC. We’re also observing a growing number of APAC buyers visiting G2.com — 27M annually — a 7 million increase over the prior year.
4. Why did G2 choose India to set up its base? Apart from the density of SaaS companies, what other things were taken into consideration?
With India as a growing SaaS (software-as-a-service) hub, we made a strategic decision to invest in a Center of Excellence in Bangalore, where approximately 30% of our employees are now based. This provides us access to the massive talent pool in Bangalore, while giving us a global cost advantage.
5. What aspects of your platform do you plan to develop in India?
Apart from the local Revenue teams who support our APAC and ANZ customers, G2 India has deep expertise in New Product Development, Data Science and Machine Learning, Content and SEO capabilities. These team members are focused on improving the experience of G2.com for both software buyers and sellers.
6. What are your projected revenues – global, and share of India/APAC?
As a privately held company, we are not able to share a forecast on our financial plans. However, I can share that we have surpassed $100M ARR globally as a business.
7. Indian SaaS players esp in enterprise tech have already established a strong foothold in the global market. What according to you should these players and aspiring SaaS companies factor in their GTM strategy going forward?
While the promise of AI is fueling software investments globally and in the Asia-Pacific region, buyers have high expectations for ROI on these solutions. And they’re also placing extra scrutiny on every purchase, with more C-suite involvement in purchasing decisions.
With this in mind, it will be important for SaaS companies to focus on delivering value for their customers quickly, especially for AI-powered products. They should also look to communicate and differentiate their AI capabilities, showcasing the real value they can provide. With employee productivity being the #1 way organizations are measuring the ROI of their AI software investments, it will be important to showcase how your products contribute to this metric.
Vendors should also be multi-threading their outreach, recognizing the various departments that contribute to a buying decision – including the C-suite, IT, and Information Security, among others. They should have custom messaging that caters to each persona, speaking to their unique needs and concerns.
8. Your Buyer Behavior Report 2024 doesn’t give much consideration to security but integration as a more important consideration. Are you saying that data privacy and cybersecurity is not top of the agenda for software spending?
Security is certainly rising in importance for software buyers – and even more so for APAC buyers. According to our Buyer Behavior Report survey, “security features the software provides” was ranked as the #1 software buying consideration overall.
91% of APAC buyers said their organization requires a security or privacy assessment when purchasing software. This is more than their EMEA (76%) and North American (78%) counterparts. Similarly, buyers in the region also consider a vendor’s history with breaches or security incidents when evaluating software – 91% compared to 75% of EMEA and 80% of North American respondents. With the rise of the security conscious buyer, vendors should be sure to tout their security standards and certifications to ease buyers’ concerns.
Recognizing the crucial role security plays in the deal cycle, earlier this year we introduced the ability for vendors to add a security assessment badge on their G2 Profiles. These new security assessment badges can help buyers identify a solution as a potential option in their buying process. By giving buyers the opportunity to evaluate a vendor’s external security qualifications and compliance efforts early on, it enables them to complete an important step in the sales process quickly, which can lead to shorter sales cycles. Current integration partners for this feature include SafeBase, Whistic, Drata, Conveyor, Vanta, and Responsive.
More recently, we brought another security-focused feature into the fold — partnering with SecurityScorecard to feature their external cybersecurity ratings directly in G2 Profiles. The SecurityScorecard grading is akin to credit scores for cybersecurity. Products will feature an A-F letter grade measuring their security posture, another helpful piece of security information to guide buyers’ purchasing decisions. At the same time, this grade should also motivate vendors to maintain or improve their security to achieve the ‘A’ standard desired by their customers and prospects.
9. What is your forecast for VC investments in AI led companies? Which sectors and segments will see the maximum innovation and interest based on the activity on your platform?
AI investment is booming for startups, tech giants, and global IT buyers, which is creating a massive opportunity for growth and disruption. According to Goldman Sachs, $200 billion will be invested in AI globally in 2025. The AI categories we see experiencing the most rapid growth on G2 include AI image generators, AI chatbots, AI code generation, AI writing assistants, and text-to-speech software. Ultimately, content creation is at the heart of AI growth.
In addition to these AI categories, we also see other markets like Design, Marketing, and Sales software seeing a massive growth, as a result of the AI-powered products and features booming in these categories. Artificial intelligence will automate much of our tedious and repetitive tasks so we can focus on uniquely human connection and creation. For example, sales teams will be able to spend more time fostering relationships with customers and prospects, while marketers will brainstorm new creative ideas and campaigns, relying on AI as an assistant to help them work more efficiently. With massive AI opportunities here, I expect these software categories to continue to grow.
10. How is AI changing the software marketplace?
AI is changing – and will revolutionize – the way software is researched, purchased, and sold. It will only accelerate the ongoing shift to online software research and buying and customer self-service – delivering modern digital buyer experiences. The ability of AI to provide immediate, data-driven insights is a key driver of this shift. We’ve already observed the shift of B2B software buying to mirror consumer-like shopping. In fact, 69% of global B2B software buyers say they usually engage a salesperson at a software company only when they have made a purchasing decision. Now, as we’ve entered an age of AI, we’re seeing an acceleration in software innovation and the shift to digital buying.
AI is answering buyers’ needs to deliver, fast. According to our 2024 Buyer Behavior Report, based on a survey of over 1,900 software buyers across the globe, 56% said their organization had purchased an AI platform within the last 3 months (as of March 2024). Additionally, 78% of buyers said they desire ROI from a software purchase within 6 months and 62% said they expect even faster ROI from AI software and/or AI-powered software.
We see AI fueling SaaS innovation as vendors are bringing new AI-powered products to market to meet customers’ needs. On G2, we added nearly 800 new AI products over the last year as AI remains the fastest-growing category on G2 . One example of this is AI Writing Assistants, which now has over 500 products featured, compared to just 21 products in this category in December 2019. We also see AI fueling growth of other software categories like Design and Marketing as vendors introduce new AI-powered features.
11. What are the kind of quality check does G2 undertake (if any) before enlisting a software vendor
The Analysts on G2’s Market Research team review every single new profile that is added to the site. The team first reviews if the offering is a B2B product or service offering and is also GA (General Available), as any product in Beta will not be listed on G2. From there, the team will review which category or categories that product or service qualifies for based on inclusion criteria that is available for every category on G2. Anyone may submit their company or product to be considered for a G2 Profile, and G2 Analysts may also add others they come across in their own research. All will go through the same level of vetting before being published to G2.com
