How AI Will Disrupt India’s IT Services Industry And Its 1.5M Engineers/Year | Bhaskar Ghosh, 8VC
The Neon Show
Why SaaS Commands High Multiples
Bhaskar explains drivers of SaaS multiples—usage growth and winner-take-most network effects—missing in many services plays.
After 20+ years at some of the most important Silicon Valley tech companies like Yahoo, LinkedIn, Oracle, Informix and NerdWallet, Bhaskar today leads investment of enterprise infrastructure companies at 8 VC.
Bhaskar Ghosh spent 20+ years at some of the most important Silicon Valley tech companies before moving into venture capital as a Partner at 8VC.
After completing his PhD in computer science from Yale, he worked across Yahoo, LinkedIn, Oracle, Informix and NerdWallet. He brings this experience to founders building the next generation of enterprise infrastructure companies.
In this episode Bhaskar explains how IT services are being reimagined for India, a country that over the last 25 years turned its skilled workforce into a global services engine. We discuss the shift happening inside workflows most people do not think about: mid-office ops, call centers, insurance, travel and HR. These are areas where thousands of people move information every day, and where AI is now good enough to take over entire workflows.
Bhaskar talks about the founders already building in this space, including those buying traditional services companies and rebuilding them with AI at the core. He also explains why this new wave will not behave, scale or be valued like SaaS, because this is no longer pure software. It is the reinvention of services.
If you are a founder making engineering decisions, someone curious about the less visible layers of software, or interested in people who move technology forward, this conversation with Bhaskar is for you.
00:00 –Trailer
03:03 – How India will reimagine IT services (TCS, Infosys)
04:32 – “why now” of services
06:07 – How unstructured data became easier to handle?
07:53 – What LLMs can do today with high precision
10:35 – Use of GenAI will increase margins in services
11:54 – Front & mid offices will become more productive and lean
14:30 – Will a pure services business scale anymore?
15:55 – Legacy service businesses + AI-first software
20:04 – Real challenge to operate and scale such businesses
20:33 – 3 reasons on why SaaS companies get higher multiples?
22:06 – Network-effect players win big in SaaS
24:18 – Replacing software v/s replacing services
26:16 – Business without inherent network effects (yet)
28:22 – Is AI unlocking TAM larger than Software era?
30:57 – How prosperity of a country influences growth of Co’s
32:50 – India’s tech talent is key to India-US corridor
39:36 – Deeply disruptive AI Co’s will come from India
43:04 – How new-age AI services companies of India should grow in US?
44:39 – Current BPOs have an unfair advantage
47:21 – Will older BPOs understand the importance of AI?
49:22 – A Moat in outcome-based pricing can replace old businesses
51:50 – Has the US ever been sensitive to cost?
55:23 – The new AI-enabled services have a Palantir-risk flavour
58:47 – Where to build when model Co’s eat forward & backward revenue?
01:06:10 – What type of founding teams are needed?
01:08:10 – How founders think about GTM is changing
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