How Open Energy Market Accelerated Its Software Roadmap With an Offshore Development Team in Bangalore

How Did Open Energy Market Accelerate Its Software Roadmap With an Offshore Development Team in India?

Open Energy Market (OEM), the UK's first and only transparent marketplace for commercial energy procurement, needed to make significant upfront technology investments before earning revenue from its SaaS platform. With limited working capital and an ambitious software development roadmap, the company partnered with Potentiam to build a dedicated offshore development team in Bengaluru (Bangalore), India, alongside an operations and support team in Cape Town, South Africa. The result was a transformation in delivery speed that fast-tracked OEM's growth well beyond initial expectations, turning offshore engineers into integral members of the business rather than arms-length contractors.

This case study examines how OEM, now operating as True (powered by Open Energy Market), solved a challenge that many early-stage energy SaaS companies face: the need to build complex technology before revenue catches up with ambition. CEO Chris Maclean's approach, guided by Potentiam's consultancy and sector expertise, offers a replicable model for UK energy technology companies navigating similar constraints as the global energy management systems market grows toward USD 84 billion by 2029.

Sources: MarketsandMarkets (Energy Management Systems Market, 2025), nasscom (2024), Open Energy Market case study results

What Challenge Was Open Energy Market Facing?

Open Energy Market was founded in October 2013 by two experienced entrepreneurs with a clear vision: to create the first and only transparent marketplace for buying commercial energy. Their platform uses 100% transparent price comparison technology to help major UK brands, including restaurant chains, supermarkets, and national retailers, procure energy more efficiently. The business model required building a sophisticated SaaS platform before it could generate meaningful revenue from clients.

This created a classic startup economics problem. OEM needed to make significant upfront investments in software development, building the marketplace infrastructure, data analytics engine, and user-facing tools, all before the platform could attract enough commercial energy buyers to sustain itself. Working capital was limited, and every hiring decision had to stretch the available funds as far as possible.

Hiring a full software development team in the UK was not financially viable at OEM's stage. A senior software engineer in London commands approximately £79,000 in base salary according to Glassdoor, rising to roughly £95,000 once employer National Insurance, pension and overheads are added. For a team of four senior developers, that translates to approximately £360,000 per year or more, a figure that would have consumed a disproportionate share of OEM's available capital and left little room for iteration, scaling, or the inevitable pivots that early-stage SaaS companies require.

The challenge was not simply about finding cheaper engineers. OEM needed developers who would become genuinely embedded in the company, understanding the nuances of commercial energy procurement, the regulatory complexity of UK energy markets, and the specific requirements of enterprise clients. Traditional outsourcing, where code is delivered to a specification without deeper understanding of the business, would not produce the quality of product OEM's market position demanded.

Why Did OEM Choose Potentiam as Its Offshoring Partner?

The energy sector is not an industry where generic offshoring providers tend to deliver strong results. Energy procurement involves complex regulatory frameworks, volatile commodity markets, and enterprise clients with demanding compliance requirements. OEM needed a partner that understood these dynamics from direct experience, not from a capabilities brochure.

Potentiam's founding team brought precisely that experience. The consultancy was built by operators who had scaled EnergyQuote JHA to over 300 employees, with approximately 60% of that workforce based offshore, before the firm's acquisition by Accenture in 2015. This was not theoretical knowledge of energy sector offshoring. It was operational experience built from years of managing offshore teams delivering energy consultancy services at scale.

This shared background in energy consultancy proved to be a critical differentiator in the partnership. Potentiam understood not just how to recruit and manage offshore teams, but specifically how technology teams in the energy sector need to operate: the data sensitivity requirements, the regulatory awareness, and the domain-specific knowledge that separates effective energy SaaS development from generic software outsourcing.

"Potentiam worked very closely with OEM to understand our needs, our goals, how we were going to expand, and what our strategy was, and then gave us the consultancy, the advice for us to go out and hire those team members under the guidance and recommendation of Potentiam."

Chris Maclean, CEO, Open Energy Market

Chris Maclean's description highlights an important distinction in Potentiam's approach. Rather than simply providing a staffing solution, Potentiam delivered strategic consultancy first: understanding OEM's expansion plans, assessing what roles and capabilities were needed, and then guiding the hiring process with recommendations grounded in real energy sector experience. This consultative approach is what separates a strategic offshoring partner from a recruitment agency or a BPO provider.

Why Was Bengaluru the Right Location for OEM's Offshore Engineering Team?

Bengaluru is the centre of India's technology economy, and for an energy SaaS company like OEM, the city offered a combination of depth, specialisation, and cost efficiency that no other location could match. The city is home to one of the largest concentrations of software engineering, data and AI talent in the country, with an ecosystem built around global technology companies, product firms and engineering centres.

For OEM's specific needs, Bengaluru's advantages were particularly compelling. Building a transparent energy marketplace platform requires backend engineering for real-time price comparison, data analytics capability for processing energy market data, and frontend development for enterprise-grade user interfaces. India's technology industry workforce of 5.8 million people, as reported by nasscom for FY2024, provides the scale of talent pipeline needed to find specialists in these areas.

The cost economics were equally important for a startup managing limited working capital. The average software engineer in Bengaluru earns approximately £9,500 to £10,500 in base salary (around INR 10 to 12 lakh), while a senior engineer commands around £16,000 to £17,500 (INR 18 to 20 lakh) according to Glassdoor and PayScale, or roughly £20,000 to £25,000 when fully loaded. Compare that with senior UK equivalents at £79,000 or more in base salary alone, and the financial case becomes clear: OEM could build a larger, more capable development team in Bengaluru for a fraction of what a smaller UK team would cost.

India's broader offshoring ecosystem also provided infrastructure advantages. According to nasscom, India hosted more than 1,750 global capability centres in 2024, many of them in Bengaluru. This mature ecosystem means that Bengaluru's support infrastructure, including office spaces, connectivity, legal frameworks for international employment, and professional development pathways, is well established rather than experimental.

How Do UK and India Software Development Costs Compare for Energy SaaS Companies?

The financial case for building an offshore development team in India is driven by significant cost differentials across every level of software engineering. For energy SaaS companies like OEM, where development budgets compete directly with other startup priorities such as sales, marketing, and regulatory compliance, these savings can determine whether an ambitious product roadmap is feasible or not.

Sources: Glassdoor and PayScale salary data (2025 to 2026), nasscom (2024); team totals from the Open Energy Market case study

For OEM, these cost differentials meant the difference between building the platform they envisioned and having to compromise on features, quality, or delivery speed. The global offshore software development market exists precisely because these economics enable companies to achieve more with their available capital than domestic-only hiring models allow.

How Did Potentiam Implement OEM's Offshore Team Structure?

Potentiam's implementation for OEM followed a structured methodology that prioritised understanding the business before placing a single team member. This consultative approach reflects Potentiam's operational philosophy: offshore teams succeed when they are built around a company's strategy, not fitted into a generic staffing template.

What Results Did Open Energy Market Achieve With Its Offshore Teams?

The partnership with Potentiam delivered results that exceeded OEM's initial expectations across several dimensions. The impact went beyond cost savings to fundamentally change the pace and scope of what the company could achieve.

Accelerated software development roadmap: The Bengaluru team enabled OEM to build its energy marketplace platform, including real-time price comparison tools, data analytics capabilities, and enterprise client interfaces, at a pace that would have been impossible with a UK-only development team operating within OEM's budget constraints. Features that might have taken years to develop were delivered on compressed timelines, giving OEM a competitive advantage in bringing its transparent energy procurement model to market.

Growth beyond initial expectations: The combination of faster development and efficient capital allocation fast-tracked OEM's overall business growth. By stretching limited working capital further through offshore engineering, the company was able to invest in parallel across product development, market expansion, and operational capability, rather than being forced to sequence these activities due to budget constraints.

Seamless team integration: Perhaps the most significant outcome was the quality of integration achieved between OEM's UK leadership and its offshore teams. The Bengaluru developers and Cape Town operations staff became what Chris Maclean described as integral members of the business. This is a meaningful distinction from the typical outsourcing relationship, where offshore teams operate at a distance from the company's culture, strategy, and day-to-day decision-making.

Efficient use of startup capital: For a company that needed to invest in technology before it could generate revenue, the offshore model transformed OEM's financial equation. Instead of hiring four UK developers at approximately £360,000 per year, OEM built a larger team in Bengaluru for roughly £112,000, freeing capital for other critical business needs while actually increasing development capacity.

Operational support through Cape Town: The South African hub provided customer-facing and administrative support functions with English-first talent in a time zone closely aligned with the UK. This secondary hub complemented the Bengaluru development team by handling the operational workload that would otherwise have consumed time and budget in London.

Why Is Offshore Development Critical for UK Energy SaaS Companies in 2026?

OEM's experience reflects a broader structural shift in the UK energy technology sector. The demand for sophisticated energy management software is growing rapidly, driven by regulatory change, market volatility, and enterprise demand for data-driven procurement tools. Companies that cannot accelerate their development timelines risk losing ground in a market that rewards speed and capability.

MarketsandMarkets values the global energy management systems market, spanning software, hardware and services, at USD 49.01 billion in 2025 and projects it to reach USD 84.34 billion by 2029, a compound annual growth rate of 13.8%. Software and cloud-based platforms are central to that growth, underlining the role of technology in the energy transition.

For UK energy technology companies, the challenge is that building competitive software requires engineering talent at scale, and the UK tech sector faces persistent salary inflation and talent competition from better-funded competitors in fintech, healthtech, and AI. AI-driven automation promises substantial savings for the energy sector, but capturing that value requires the software engineering capacity to build and deploy these systems.

The economics of energy SaaS offshoring are increasingly compelling. As energy firms and utilities push ahead with digitalisation programmes, the demand for energy-domain software engineers will only intensify. Companies like OEM that have already established offshore engineering teams in India are positioned to move faster than competitors still relying exclusively on UK-based development resources.

What Can Other Energy Technology Companies Learn from OEM's Approach?

OEM's partnership with Potentiam offers several principles that are directly transferable to other UK energy technology companies considering offshore development teams.

Choose a partner with sector expertise: Generic offshoring providers lack the domain understanding needed to recruit effectively for energy technology roles. Potentiam's founding team built and scaled an energy consultancy to 300+ employees with majority-offshore teams before its acquisition by Accenture. That operational heritage means Potentiam understands how energy companies work, what technical skills matter in this sector, and how to integrate offshore teams into energy-specific workflows.

Invest in integration, not just cost savings: The difference between OEM's experience and a typical outsourcing arrangement was the level of integration achieved. Offshore team members became integral participants in OEM's business, contributing to strategic discussions, understanding client requirements, and evolving alongside the company's product vision. This level of embedding requires deliberate effort in onboarding, communication design, and cultural alignment, exactly the kind of support that Potentiam's embedded HRBP model provides.

Match locations to functions: OEM's decision to place software development in Bengaluru and operations in Cape Town reflects a principle of geographic specialisation. Each location was chosen for its specific strengths relative to the work being performed there. Energy SaaS companies should evaluate their function mix and select locations accordingly, rather than defaulting to a single offshore destination for all roles.

Start before you think you are ready: OEM was an early-stage company with limited capital when it began its offshore journey. Waiting until the business was larger or better-funded would have meant slower development, higher costs, and missed market opportunities. For energy technology startups navigating similar constraints, the evidence from OEM's experience suggests that building an offshore engineering team early accelerates growth rather than adding complexity.

With the energy management systems market forecast to grow at close to 14% a year through 2029, companies that secure engineering capacity now, whether through offshore teams in Bengaluru or multi-hub models spanning India and South Africa, will be better positioned to capture their share of this expanding market than those still competing for increasingly expensive UK talent.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is energy SaaS offshoring and how does it benefit UK startups?

Energy SaaS offshoring involves building dedicated software development and operations teams in locations like Bengaluru, India and Cape Town, South Africa to support UK-headquartered energy technology companies. For startups like OEM, the primary benefit is the ability to build a larger, more capable engineering team within a constrained budget. Rather than outsourcing individual projects to third-party vendors, companies build embedded teams that function as genuine extensions of their organisation, understanding the business domain and contributing to product strategy alongside UK leadership.

How much does an offshore development team in India cost compared to a UK team?

A four-developer team of senior engineers in London costs approximately £360,000 per year in fully loaded employment costs. The equivalent team in Bengaluru costs roughly £112,000, representing a saving of around 69%. At the individual level, a senior software engineer in London commands approximately £79,000 in base salary (roughly £95,000 fully loaded) according to Glassdoor, while a senior engineer in Bengaluru earns around £16,000 to £17,500 in base salary, or roughly £20,000 to £25,000 fully loaded. These savings of 40 to 70% enable energy SaaS companies to invest more in product development, hire additional specialists, or allocate capital to other growth priorities.

Why is Bengaluru the preferred location for offshore software development teams?

Bengaluru is India's largest technology hub, with one of the deepest concentrations of software engineering, data and AI talent in the country. India hosts more than 1,750 global capability centres according to nasscom (2024), a large share of them in Bengaluru, representing a mature ecosystem with established infrastructure for international technology teams. India's technology workforce of 5.8 million people provides a deep and continuously replenished talent pipeline. For energy SaaS companies specifically, Bengaluru offers engineers experienced in building data-intensive platforms, real-time analytics systems, and cloud-based applications.

How does time zone difference affect collaboration between UK and Bengaluru teams?

Bengaluru operates at GMT+5:30, creating a 5.5-hour offset from the UK. This provides 4 to 5 hours of direct overlap during the working day for synchronous communication, meetings, and collaborative work. The offset also enables a follow-the-sun development cycle: work completed during Indian business hours can be reviewed and built upon when the UK team starts their day. With structured handoff processes, clear documentation protocols, and appropriate use of asynchronous communication tools, this time zone difference becomes a productivity advantage rather than a limitation.

What is the difference between offshoring and outsourcing for energy technology companies?

Outsourcing typically involves contracting work to a third-party vendor who delivers outputs to a specification. The vendor's team works for the vendor, not for the client company, and the relationship is transactional. Offshoring through a partner like Potentiam takes a fundamentally different approach: building dedicated teams that work exclusively for the client company and operate as embedded extensions of the organisation. OEM's Bengaluru developers were not writing code for an outsourcing firm; they were integral members of OEM, participating in the company's strategic direction and product evolution. This distinction matters enormously for the quality of output and the long-term value of the team.

How long does it take to build an offshore software development team in Bengaluru?

Through Potentiam, initial team deployment typically takes 4-8 weeks from engagement to team members starting work. The strategic assessment and role definition phase runs in parallel with candidate sourcing, enabling faster overall timelines. Software development teams generally require a ramp-up period of several weeks as engineers learn the existing codebase, architectural patterns, and domain-specific requirements. Potentiam's structured onboarding process, combined with embedded HRBP support, accelerates this integration compared with companies attempting to build offshore teams independently without local management infrastructure.

Sources: MarketsandMarkets, Energy Management Systems Market report; nasscom Strategic Review 2025 press release; Glassdoor and PayScale salary data (2025 to 2026); Open Energy Market case study