India's opportunity in Generative SaaS

With all the substance and hype behind GenAI in the US, we're seeing almost every SaaS and infra software company in India adjust its roadmap, sometimes dramatically. Everyone’s figuring out how to take full advantage of AI and LLMs. Much of this work is being done to enhance their existing product features and product performance.

But there are a few areas that are not seeing as much attention and activity in India, including new LLMs, new infra/devtools and generative SaaS. I’ll talk about generative SaaS here and cover the others later this week.

There is an opportunity in new domain-specific “Generative SaaS” applications that were not possible before GenAI. These are workflow-based applications built ground up with GenAI. These will be built on the principles I outlined last week here and here, including closed-loop learning.

Think of all the processes that IT Services firms / BPOs / KPOs in India have captured in areas like market research, content production, legal analysis, financial analysis, call centers, IT services. These are all ripe for disruption.

Think of all the manual-work oriented agencies that create content, do research, manage customer relationships and answer phone calls. Think of law firms, accounting firms, tax firms, media agencies, research firms, performance marketing agencies, translation agencies, IT services agencies etc. Given enough of a dataset, much of this work can be automated or at least partially automated.

Think of all the SaaS applications in mature SaaS markets globally - UX can be reimagined and far more value delivered. Indian founders have a collective PhD in this category.

BTW, these ideas can be adopted by incumbents themselves, such as the IT Services/ BPO/ KPO firms or incumbent SaaS companies. If anything, this new platform shift has seen a swifter reaction from incumbents than I’ve ever seen in the past. So I think there will be peril and opportunity for incumbents and their employees.