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As consumers seek instant gratification, daily and hourly deliveries have become routine and have put supply chains under constant pressure. There is a need for businesses to adopt SaaS to keep delivery systems agile, and enable faster and more efficient deliveries.

At TechSparks 2023 Mumbai edition, Yogesh Lele, India Head – ISV, ECOM/D2C Segment, Startups, AWS India; Shashank Randev, Founder VC, 100X.VC; and Swarup Bose, Founder, CEO, Celcius Logistics Solutions Pvt Ltd deep-dived into how SaaS can be invaluable in streamlining businesses and creating transparent supply chains.

Evolving supply chain landscape

Who would have thought in 2020 that groceries could be delivered in 10 minutes? The world is changing at an unimaginable pace and Lele of AWS India believes transformation and disruption is happening in supply chains as well.

“SaaS is primarily driving transformation in the supply chain by giving businesses access to softwares with great cost efficiency and advanced technology,” he said.

Lele believes application of SaaS in the supply chain has multiple benefits, including improved visibility of inventory and customer behaviour, potential to scale, cost management, and an increase in efficiency.

“We at AWS work with a lot of SaaS vendors and supply chain companies. Our AI services have helped businesses build invoice automation, real-time tracking, and logistics delivery. Moreover, our analytics stack includes services like Redshift, Athena, and a complete IoT platform to facilitate last-mile visibility,” he said.

SaaS-ifying the cold chain

Bose revealed that AWS helped launch the entire cold chain network at Celcius. The cold chain industry has been operating on traditional systems for the longest time and Celcius is one of the first startups digitising the entire cold supply chain.

Celsius’ focus was always on saving perishables and efficiently delivering products like agricultural products, medicines, vaccines etc. With the help of SaaS, the company has been able to live-track, see the life cycle of a perishable product, analyse the data trends, and more.

“We recently collaborated with Zomato Intercity to launch our hyper-local services. And the campaign was a huge success,” Bose said.

SaaS startups and funding

Randev said it is a great time to invest in early-stage SaaS startups, adding that 30 % of its portfolio companies are in SaaS across different verticals.

He believes India is at an advantageous position when it comes to the growth of SaaS companies and there is a huge market to tap.

“We have backed a lot of startups that are implementing SaaS into their traditional process. Also, we have backed companies that are digitising backend logistical warehouses,” he said.

The 100X.VC founder revealed that SaaS companies, particularly in supply chain, will be a significant contributor to their portfolio and they will be investing in at least 100 such early-stage startups this year.

“There is no funding winter for companies who have managed to find the right product-market fit,” Randev concluded.