CIOInsider India Magazine
SaaS - How Changing Businesses Implement Technology and Create Employment
In an interaction with CIO Insider magazine, Varun Chopra, CIO, Studds Accessories Ltd, expounds on why SaaS are betting big technology innovations, for providing the solutions of modern-day businesses, and how to overcome problems of using SaaS technology.
Which are the factors driving the increased SaaS adoption?
Whenever any CIO/IT Leader has to go to business leadership for a new initiative approval, there gives rise to questions such as how much do we need to spend? In how much time it will get implemented? When will we start seeing the benefits/ROI? What if we did not get the benefits as desired or as planned? These factors push towards SaaS production adoption with key benefits as follows:
1)Faster time to market/deploy
2)Low initial investment
3)Faster visibility of benefits that may be perceived in longer run.
4)Data security as the key responsibility with SaaS provider while companies need to plan additional measures over it.
5)Reducing CIO pain of managing herculean infra depending on application size.
6)Decent support mechanism
7)If you don’t like or things do not go as per plan – JUST STOP IT.
Highlight some of the key strengths or winning formulae showcased by successful SaaS companies and elaborate on the factors that attract international companies to invest in Indian SaaS companies.
India is one of the largest knowledge hubs of the world with big tech pool and vast market. Every global player wants to be in India to cater to Indian customers. Indian SaaS based solutions are created more in accordance with Indian market needs. Although different from earlier, it’s still a market that provides lower investment with high quality products which can be taken globally. Lastly Indian SaaS companies especially during last few years have launched innovation solutions in latest tech like AI, ML, chatbots, cybersecurity apart from the direct business need related solutions. Previously it was said that Bangalore was the startup hub of India but during pandemic Gurugam and other metro’s + even tier II towns are coming up startups at a rapid pace as lot of young people are looking at being entrepreneurs to make a difference and this is something global companies want to tap.
What is the level of employment opportunities offered in this industry and what are the skillsets in demand?
As SaaSindustry continue to expand so does the employment opportunities which are increasing at a rapid pace.
Agility, hard work and passion towards launching new products/solving business problems innovatively is a key skill required. Apart from those technical skills in demand are:
•Industry specific Business analyst – These people provide knowhow on how to reinvent existing business processes through innovation solutions.
•Full Stack Developers¬¬who can plan, architect, and develop solutions at a quick pace.
•Database experts with knowledge of traditional databases and modern databases like Hadoop.
•Cloud Computing specialists especially on Azure and AWS.
•AI/ML professionals are difficult to find and very much in demand.
•Cybersecurity professions are in a high demand as they have a huge responsibility to safe.
•Mobile app developers as business needs SaaS products on mobile with a great UI/UX.
I believe there will be a lot of new companies coming and with Indian Government also putting in reforms like boosting inputs to various businesses like support systems and equivalents are creating the buzz for India’s startup culture
In my view, key trends are:
1)Industry-centric solutions solving problems which provides more visibility to data involved in business processes, helps in decision making, connects the ecosystem, that is, good supply chain planning solution which integrates with all business processes.
2)Data Analytics & Data mining with tools like Tableau, PowerBi, etc. which gives business insights.
3)Bot-based solutions like RPA, chatbots supplemented with ML/AI are the next big thing.
4)Innovation keeps happening on how to further ease collaboration/virtual working.
5)Cybersecurity solutions are evolving with newer detect, prevent, scan and respond techniques.
6)Cloud technologies are evolving at a rapid pace with both AWS and Azure making things very easy.
7)Innovations in Blockchain solutions in business is to be closely watched.
Where is India’s SaaS industry headed?
I think the Indian industry has a very exciting time ahead. Freshwork getting listed in NASDAQ itself was a very big thing. The company has grown fast with excellent customer centric solutions in the past few years. I think new innovations will keep on happening which will allow business processes to reinvent themselves through innovative SaaS products. I believe there will be a lot of new companies coming and with Indian Government also putting in reforms like boosting inputs to various businesses like support systems and equivalents are creating the buzz for India’s startup culture. A lot of companies that have been there in this space may become unicorns. So I think it's an exciting time ahead and I think more and more innovative solutions may come up, which may be at the end make customer’s life easy.
It’s important for this journey to go on for the country’s success.
