The End of Point Solutions in India’s SaaS Economy

Indian SaaS companies once grew by identifying sharp vertical problems and solving them at speed. That model involving point solutions focused on a single issue no longer aligns with enterprise expectations. Globally, organisations now demand platforms that unify device management, app management, identity, security, analytics, and automation.

In 2025, the fragmentation that once enabled SaaS growth has become its primary choke point. The Indian customer, whether an insurance giant in Navi Mumbai or a logistics operator in Chennai, is tired of managing five consoles and debugging three agents on the same smartphone.

What enterprises want is not another tool, but an ecosystem. Scalefusion was geared towards having a unified IT platform, or giving a new meaning to endpoint management, said chief product officer Sriram Kakarala. “It doesn’t stop at device management by applying policies, but goes ahead and manages the applications aspect.”

That shift, subtle at first, is now unavoidable. Horizontal models can no longer be a product strategy. 

The Vertical Problem

Founders typically begin with a narrow wedge: one problem solved completely. It is the logical MVP approach and often the fastest path to traction. Yet, Indian enterprise environments rarely remain stable. A startup that begins as a device security tool is eventually asked to integrate with identity, enforce compliance, generate analytics, and handle onboarding. A SaaS access management solution encounters BYOD fleets, regional data laws, and field-force apps that have no standardised APIs.

For Scalefusion, the turning point came when customers repeatedly complained about “three different supports” for borderline similar issues. “That is where we kind of geared towards having a unified IT platform,” Kakarala said. Enterprises, he said, were already using tools, but they wanted “all in one console,” where IT admins train once and extend capabilities as needed.

Agent fatigue occurs when five services compete for the same endpoint, leading to operational downtime.

Horizontal Thinking Wins Because AI Demands It

Artificial intelligence did not just accelerate this shift; it made the old model impossible.

“If you’re stitching endpoint data, SaaS telemetry, identity signals and security events into one coherent operational fabric, you need an intelligence layer,” Kakarala said. At Scalefusion, that work includes models “trained on synthetic data to eventually offer a layer where the AI complements everything we have been doing.” These causal and remediation models, he added, will “automatically and autonomously remediate” issues.

AI is not a chatbot bolted onto a dashboard. It is a campus of signals, learning from context. For example, a vertical product sees one corridor of a city; a horizontal product sees the entire urban plan. When that AI encounters a vulnerability in a device fleet or a SaaS policy misalignment, it needs to understand the identity, the compliance layer, the network posture and the end user. 

Point solutions cannot see enough to make autonomous decisions. So they stall. “Technically, the systems are very fragmented,” said Mohit Ambani, founder of GenAI startup Unomok. “Data hygiene is poor, and it is scattered in PDFs, WhatsApp messages, and Excel exports.”

In this context, generic copilots collapse. Enterprise AI needs to be grounded. Ambani explained that Unomok trains copilots “within the VPC of the customer or on-prem system where their data does not leave their premises.” That copilot then deploys rule-based guardrails and human-approval workflows for high-risk processes. “The accuracy is always at 92-97% in real projects,” he added.

Building horizontal models enables startups to create flexible platforms that solve multiple adjacent problems, reduce tool fragmentation, and scale across various industries. Unlike vertical stacks, horizontals enable stronger moats, broader market reach, better cross-sell potential, and deeper AI-driven intelligence, making them more resilient, defensible, and globally competitive. 

Unomok reports 45-70% ticket deflection in IT, HR and sales operations, and measurable reductions in invoice errors and frontline mistakes. 

Does this Change the Cloud Infrastructure?

Horizontal platforms are winning at the infrastructure layer, too. When endpoints and cloud workloads operate as a single threat surface, the idea of a vertical security product becomes absurd.

“We are at a point where cloud infrastructure, endpoints, and security are no longer separate conversations,” Bhavesh Goswami, CEO and founder of CloudThat, an organisation that offers Cloud training and consultancy, told AIM. “A compromised endpoint can be an entry point into the cloud, and a vulnerable cloud resource can just as easily become the path to breach an endpoint.”

Microsoft’s enterprise stack is cited as a model: Intune governs endpoints, Defender spans cloud and device, and both sit in a unified security view. If an identity leak on a laptop triggers lateral movement into a VPC, no point tool can stop it.

“Vertical point solutions solve specific problems extremely well, but modern security challenges don’t confine themselves to neat categories,” Goswami noted. Horizontally integrated ecosystems “provide a single dashboard, unified alerting, and deeper context.”

For Indian startups, there is a staffing reality as well. A horizontal platform lets a small team manage a wide surface. A vertical stack requires more specialists than early-stage founders can afford.

“Don’t make the system so rigid that it is completely closed for any kind of extension,” Kakarala warned. A startup that hard-codes itself into a corner ends up “bolting everything on top of it, like a band-aid solution.”

The Moat That Matters

Industry experts also argue that the horizontal stacks are not just a unified solution for bugs, but also an economic one.

Kakarala emphasises that while there are multiple approaches, from an IT perspective, a device management solution that uses signals to grant app access and generate compliance scores can greatly enhance value. This integration can potentially double or triple ROI. However, when assessing multiple solutions, it’s crucial to consider interoperability, as it affects scalability and speed.

Customers buy ecosystems because switching costs are brutal. When a product solves device management, then application access, and later identity, the expansion feels organic, not opportunistic. “Upselling becomes a natural fit,” he said.

“I definitely think startups should look at building what we call a red ocean or blue ocean theory, rather than going only on a product,” Kakarala added. An initial vertical problem is fine for the MVP stage. But once it is solved, “you should look at the other areas that are horizontal.”

India’s SaaS story has matured. While the first wave was about solving problems, the next is about owning workflows in a unified platform. The startups that win a decade from now will be those that view the enterprise not as a single issue but as a living organism.

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