Open source Projects From India To Watch Out For in 2022

, Going an open source way to develop applications and run a company is something not so common in India. However, there are a few and we are going to discuss top open source projects from India in this article.

We rarely think of projects that we use for free when there are so many amazing paid software available in the market. Then, the stats reveal that 90% of the world's websites are running on LINUX servers. Our smartphones are running on open source Android and iOS projects. Every day we make use of the Chrome browser for most of the things to search on the web. It's enough to reveal that almost every day we make use of open source applications.

At a time when most of the world's developers are busy making open source projects on GitHub and giving back to the community, the trend is not so common in India. Most of the startup community are working on developing either a SaaS-based model or a paid model so as to generate revenue and attract investors. 

In spite of that, there are very few bootstrap projects who are working towards developing the open source application. Few of them have come a very long way and have created a name for themselves in their respective category. I am writing this article to highlight a few of them thinking it might bring an open source revolution in India: 

Calibre E-Book Reader

Started in 2006 by Dr Kovid Goyal, the application has more than 3 million active users, 6500+ GitHub stars, is used in over 200 countries and has been translated into various languages by the contributors. The application presents tremendous opportunities for book lovers to have full control over their digital libraries collection. This comprehensive e-book allows users to easily use it anywhere on any device, share and even create a backup of the library. 

ERPNext

The next-generation open source ERP platform was founded by Rushabh Mehta while solving his family business issue in using ERP. The open source ERP solution helps companies to organize and manage the work of each department ranging from accounting, human resource management, sales, purchase, inventory, CRM, administration, project and task management, manufacturing, and even website. The application had humongous support on the Github community with 5400+ GitHub stars. 

Bagisto

The open source eCommerce framework built on Laravel has been making rounds in the eCommerce community for quite a while. Launched in 2018, the platform has successfully caught the eyes of the community and managed to get 4000+ GitHub stars, 50,000+ downloads and boasts of 2000+ community members. With the likes of Magento and WooCommerce ruling the eCommerce world for the past couple of years, the scalability, security and high-performance of Laravel have pushed the framework a long way and it seemed like the best alternative to develop eCommerce application. 

Chatwoot

Chatwoot is an open-source omnichannel customer engagement suite built as an alternative to Intercom, Zendesk etc. Chatwoot helps you to connect email, website live chat, social media handles, WhatsApp etc. and manage all your customer interactions from one place. Launched in 2017 as a proprietary product focused on customer support tools for social messaging channels and seeing a deviation from its original guise, the team made the decision to open-source the product in 2019. As of now, more than 1000+ companies use the product available in 25+ languages and is proudly supported by 100+ contributors and YCombinator.

Krayin

Krayin is a Free & Opensource Laravel CRM solution for SMEs and Enterprises for complete customer lifecycle management. It automates your organization’s Sales and Marketing Operations, as a result, exponential growth in sales. Krayin also supports package development, which allows you to extend the CRM using familiar Laravel concepts such as configuration, console commands, controllers, middleware, etc.

UVdesk

UVdesk is an open source and free ticketing based help system with multi-channel and integration support with your preferred MarketPlace, Ecommerce Store, Website Upfront forms and Email. It is a service-oriented, event-driven and extensible ticketing based customer support system built with Symfony and backbone.js. UVdesk has plenty of features like ticket management, e-mail collaboration, knowledge base management, reporting etc which help you provide proficient customer support experience to your clients.

There are many other open source applications slowly booming up in the Indian ecosystem like vTigerCRM, Edusec and WebZash to name a few. With more and more community joining their hands together and increased involvement of developers in events like hacktoberfest, things are up for grabs on adoption on open source ways to build applications.