Generative artificial intelligence (AI) is profoundly changing the global software industry, and Indian SaaS startups are also actively embracing this wave of change. This article will analyze how Indian SaaS companies use generative AI technology to improve their products and services, and the impact of this trend on the future development of the Indian and global SaaS markets. From the emerging model of AI as a service (AIaaS), to existing SaaS companies actively integrating AI functions, to the emergence of emerging AI startups, this article will comprehensively demonstrate the vigorous development of the Indian SaaS industry under the AI wave.
Indian SaaS startups are actively betting on generative artificial intelligence (AI) technology to improve their products and services. According to the prediction of Aakrit Vaish, the founder of Haptik AI, in the next ten years, India will have a number of software companies worth US$100 million, and these companies will adopt completely different business models from American SaaS startups. He noted that entire industries are waiting to be disrupted.
AI as a service (AIaaS) becomes the new SaaS model. Existing SaaS companies are transforming into AI-focused entities. Matt Turck, VC of First Mark Cap, said that traditional and emerging SaaS companies will truly become AI-centric enterprises, and AIaaS will become the new SaaS model.
Indian SaaS companies such as Zoho, Freshworks, CleverTap and Atlassian are already adding generative AI capabilities to existing solutions. At the same time, many AI startups are developing new products based on these generative AI technologies. According to AIM, around 60 AI startups in India are building products using generative AI.
The Indian SaaS ecosystem is growing rapidly, from 471 startups in 2016 to over 26,000 by 2022. Currently, 11 Indian SaaS companies have annual revenue exceeding US$100 million. This elite group includes pioneers such as Zoho, Druva, Icertis and Freshworks, as well as emerging leaders such as Innovaccer, Zenoti and Postman. According to the latest report, the Indian SaaS industry is predicted to reach $50 billion by 2030, with enterprise and unicorn companies revenue reaching $20-25 billion by then.
Powered by generative AI technology, Indian SaaS companies such as Zoho, Freshworks and Yellow.ai have performed well with their products. For example, Freshworks' GenAI platform Freddy Copilot saved a B2C enterprise retail customer more than $94,000 in its first year of implementation and achieved an ROI of 187%. LeadSquared leverages LLMs and customer-specific data provided by AWS Bedrock to improve the quality of chatbot responses and optimize the user onboarding process. Clevertap's recently launched Clever.AI is designed to improve customer engagement and retention, leveraging CleverTap's proprietary TesseractDB™ data to accurately predict business outcomes.
Generative AI technology has become an important driving force for the development of Indian SaaS companies, helping them build million-dollar companies. By integrating generative AI technology into existing applications, these companies will further drive the adoption and growth of AI. Indian SaaS companies and their foreign counterparts will continue to benefit from generative AI technology to help enterprises continue to grow.
All in all, generative AI brings unprecedented opportunities to the Indian SaaS industry. In the future, as technology continues to mature and application scenarios expand, Indian SaaS companies will play an increasingly important role on the global stage. This rapidly growing market deserves continued attention.