How Workplace SaaS Startup OneTab Is Challenging Slack And Asana In Their Own Game

SaaS runs businesses today — work management platforms from American tech giants like Asana, Zoho, Salesforce, Slack and several others have emerged as command centres for businesses. As a result, the global workplace SaaS market has grown by leaps and bounds, and India is no exception.

In fact, as per a Bessemer Venture Partners report, India’s software-as-a-service (SaaS) market is projected to reach $50 Bn of annual recurring revenue (ARR) by 2030, more than doubling its size from the financial year 2024 (FY24). Industry experts see the Indian workplace Saas market growing on similar lines by the end of this decade.  

But serial entrepreneur Saket Dandotia sees a gap in the bustling market, and his belief stems from a very Indian problem. For instance, India mints a whopping 1.5 Mn engineers each year on average, as per latest available data. 

While the likes of Asana or Slack are great for general task management and communication, they fail to deliver the same efficiency for code development and software processes, which are more technical in nature.  

An engineer himself, Dandotia has been an entrepreneur since 2012, when he founded IT services provider Linkites Infotech. During his 12-plus years at the helm of the company, he saw that collaboration tools were not ideal or seamless for software development workflows. 

“The understanding of the basic operation of these tools is cost-intensive and time-consuming. You need to subscribe to a communication app, then you have API development, continuous integration (CI), continuous delivery (CD), and then project management tools, and these costs are exceptionally high. Even if you can afford these tools, the operational oversight offered is not foolproof,” Dandotia told Inc42. 

He deduced that a solution would require bringing multiple tools to a single platform, which doesn’t exist. So, he, along with Sonal Dandotia and Alok Patil, set up OneTab to bring such a unified platform designed specifically to increase developer productivity, in November 2023.

Inside OneTab’s Tech Stack

In simple terms, OneTab is a SaaS product that allows organisations to simplify software project management, primarily by integrating multiple apps for development and engineering teams. 

The startup has tapped generative AI (GenAI) to allow customers to record meetings, summarise key points, build documentation of the project’s scope, and provide mock-ups for UI and UX. Project managers can assign tasks to developers, along with due dates, thanks to generative AI. The company has also built a communication tool, similar to Slack within OneTab

Dandotia claims AI-powered intelligence gives project managers a better understanding of the time for any project, giving OneTab an edge over Asana, where deadlines are typically manually imputed.  

The startup has built in-house large language models — called OneGPT and OneCode — using Meta’s Llama 2 open-source models and OpenAI’s ChatGPT 3. 

While OneGPT generates reports for project managers, OneCode helps developers write in the coding process upon which it trained its architecture back in January 2023. 

“Our tech is heavily based on LLMs because we are taking logs of communication, development, project planning, deployment, among others right in our databases, based on which we can develop unified reports across functions,” the cofounder said. 

Dandotia claims OneTab’s advantage lies in the collaboration tools it has built specifically for software development. 

“Slack doesn’t facilitate coordination for API development projects, project management slides, along with other essential data insights. Hence, our unified platform for covering the complete software development life cycle could serve as a better alternative to the preferred tools,” he claimed

Decoding OneTab’s AI Edge

While the startup is bullish on leveraging its AI muscle to take on the more established giants in the industries, the tech majors are not far behind. For instance, The startup’s primary global competitor, Atlassian, launched a new AI assistant, Rovo, at the beginning of this month. The AI assistant can take data from first- and third-party tools  like Jira and Confluence and make searching more easy through an AI-powered search tool and other integrations into Atlassian’s products. 

Further, Salesforce-owned Slack launched its own GenAI bot last month, called Slack AI. The bot’s set of features are built directly into Slack and uses the conversation data hosted on the platform to create an intuitive AI experience for users and their organisation. 

Besides, there are a plethora of other recent instances of the workplace SaaS behemoths focus on AI. So, what sets OneTab apart? The cofounder opined that the company’s in-house LLMs allow them to one up their larger competitors due to the safety and cybersecurity edge they have. Its LLM models, OneGPT and OneCode, are vertical for client companies. This means, their data will be privately hosted. For hosting, the company also has its own cloud spaces.  

Taking On Giants

OneTab went live in November 2023 in a pilot phase in the US. Initially, the tool was utilised by Dandotia’s other two startups-Videoverse and Linkites Infotech, besides a few other companies. 

Coming out of its pilot phase within four months of inception, the startup has been able to realise an annual revenue rate (ARR) of $4 Mn as of now (May 2024). Inc42 could not verify this claim. 

The company is looking to close the current fiscal year with a revenue of $7 Mn. As of now, it is being used by IT companies like Comcast, Pineapple Design, Elevate, Fractal Alpha, Retirely along with some other clients. Dandotia claimed the likes of Wipro, Accenture, TCS are in talks to bring OneTab to their developer teams.

The cofounder believes that growth for the startup hinges on how well the team can bring in product features from other workplace SaaS tools to OneTab. Besides this, OneTab is banking heavily on GenAI to introduce features that the competition does not offer. 

How long OneTab can retain this advantage is yet to be seen. 

One potential advantage for OneTab could be how it reduces the SaaS spending for large teams, since it offers a unified platform. 

Besides adding to the leadership layer of the company, OneTab plans to focus on developers that serve niche sectors such as sports, media and entertainment with plug-and-play AI models. The claim is that companies won’t have to start a new project from scratch but can leverage GenAI abilities for task management and boosting the productivity of tech teams. 

Will OneTab’s fledgling promise keep pace with juggernauts such as Slack or Asana?

[Edited by Nikhil Subramaniam]

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