IN THIS EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW, Balakrishnan Kavikkal, Co-Founder of Autonom8 Inc., shares the company’s journey, the rise of agentic AI, and why low-code platforms are central to the future of enterprise digitisation.
Industrial Economist (IE): How did Autonom8 come into being?
Balakrishnan Kavikkal (BK): The core belief behind Autonom8 was that IT projects should be fast, iterative, and flexible, delivered like startups. This led us naturally to low-code development. We built a modular platform where users can drag, drop, and configure workflows with ease. Early on, we combined this with AI and Large Language Models (LLMs), enabling users to describe workflows in plain English and have the system generate them automatically. At the time, this was pioneering work. Even before ChatGPT, we integrated OpenAI to power our co-pilot feature. We ran on Google Cloud Platform and even showcased our solution at Google’s annual event. Today, we support around 40 customers across HR, finance, and customer service.
IE: What inspired you to take the entrepreneurial leap?
BK: I started my career at TVS and spent about six years there. After that, I moved to Max India, which was then Motorola Semiconductors, and worked there for around four years. As for becoming an entrepreneur, there wasn’t some grand plan or life-changing moment. For someone from a middle-class background, the way I saw it, I had nothing to lose. When I quit, my salary was around Rs 12,000 a month. People think it is a hard decision to leave a regular paycheck, but to me, it wasn’t. I had the confidence that if things didn’t work out, I could always find another job.
Around the same time, a few of us who had worked together at TVS were all talking about starting something on our own. Eventually, we decided to go for it. The first 10 years were full of struggles. We had no startup experience, made plenty of mistakes and faced financial crunches constantly. But we kept going. The funny thing is, we were never failing badly enough to shut down, nor succeeding enough to feel safe either. We were stuck in that middle zone – growing slowly, winning customers, but always short on working capital. Looking back, it was a long, tough journey but one built on persistence, timing, and the simple belief that failure wouldn’t be the end.
IE: What was your initial investment and how has the product journey been?
BK: We have invested around Rs 25 crore so far. Building a product company is very different from services. With SaaS, brand matters more. Marketing costs are high and revenue builds slowly. But once a customer is on board, retention is strong. In India, where financial institutions grow at 20-30 per cent annually, our revenue grows with them as they are our major clientele. It’s a compounding model, and that’s the beauty of SaaS.
IE: Which sectors do you serve?
BK: Our platform is horizontal and serves HR, finance, and customer service across industries. However, financial services form about half our customer base. One key use case is our loan origination system which processes over 10 lakh loan applications per month. We are also enabling paperless branches using facial recognition, and conversational banking that lets users complete transactions by chatting naturally.
Being a cloud-native company, our customers span India, Southeast Asia, the UK, and the US. Our core team sits here in Chennai and manages global deployments remotely. Everything from setup to configuration can be done from here.
IE: Is there a learning curve with your platform?
BK: With advances in LLMs, the learning curve is much flatter. Users can describe a workflow, and our co-pilot will generate the framework. While it’s not fully hands-off yet, users only need to understand business logic, not code. Full autonomy will come, but for now it’s a collaborative effort.
IE: What is your revenue model?
BK: We follow a SaaS-based, usage-driven model. Our platform is mostly cloud-based, and clients pay based on volume, like loans processed or HR requests handled. Think of it as similar to AWS or Google Cloud’s billing model.
IE: Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella recently said “SaaS is dead.” What’s your take?
BK: Nadella’s comment was contextual. He referred to how LLMs are disrupting traditional SaaS. But we don’t offer fixed, pre-packaged products. Our platform adapts to each organisation’s unique workflows. So, while productised SaaS might evolve, customisable platforms like ours remain essential for enterprise automation.
IE: How big is the market for low-code platforms?
BK: It’s massive and growing. Large financial institutions prefer a low-code platform over a fixed product because it allows them to design workflows around their own internal processes, rather than being forced to adapt to a rigid solution.
Earlier, digitisation was driven by apps, mainly consumer-facing like think Swiggy, Zomato, or banking apps. But now, we are entering a phase where the focus is shifting to internal enterprise processes, which have been largely manual until now. If companies truly want end-to-end automation, they must digitise these internal workflows. In that context, I see low-code platforms becoming as central as ERPs or CRMs. Today, many of our customers start with one key process and expand over time.
IE: What is the most advanced work you’re doing now?
BK: The most cutting-edge work is on the agentic side. Today, you can drag and drop AI agents into workflows and have them perform tasks traditionally done by humans. These agents handle text, audio, video, and images – they’re truly multimodal. Take our conversational banking example: a user says, “Transfer Rs 50,000 to mom.” The system identifies the recipient, confirms and executes the transaction. It also analyses past behaviour and suggests actions, like paying rent or moving idle funds. The AI can query core banking systems, convert natural language into SQL, detect sentiment and escalate to a human when needed. We’re building agents that not only respond but anticipate, guide and execute.
IE: Where do you see the company in the next five years?
BK: From an order book view, we’re already profitable. In terms of realised revenue, we’ll hit profitability in 2-3 months. We’re doubling revenue annually and believe our platform rivals global leaders like Salesforce and ServiceNow in agentic automation. The next phase is scaling sales, especially in the U.S., which may require fresh capital. We are also exploring building local teams abroad. The foundation is solid, and now it’s about growth.
IE: What’s the next big thing in tech?
BK: The shift from predictive to generative to agentic AI is transformative. Technologies are becoming autonomous. Tasks that once required human judgment are now being done by machines that can see data, decide, and act faster than us. Earlier, tools improved our productivity. Now they’re replacing parts of our thinking. Developers today are using AI tools like ChatGPT or Cursor.ai to write and refine code. The human role is shifting from creation to validation.
The future looks both scary and exciting. The pace of change is unsettling. But there are also immense opportunities. If we focus on solving real-world problems, there will be enough meaningful jobs. We’re at a transition point, and how we adapt will define the future. Even in top institutions, placements are getting tougher. It shows how deep and fast this change is. We need to rethink education and job readiness. –
-with input from Mohamed Ameen
