Deloitte India’s New Low-Code Tool Only Confirms SaaSpocalypse Fears

Building and deploying AI agents in everyday business operations has largely remained within the domain of AI-first tech companies. But as demand grows for faster application development and smarter automation, consulting and technology firms are stepping in with integrated platforms.

Deloitte India will launch GenW.AI, a low-code platform that helps enterprises build and deploy applications and AI agents, at the India AI Impact Summit in New Delhi next week. 

Developed entirely in India, GenW.AI is positioned as an all-in-one platform that brings application development, dashboards, workflows, and AI agents under a single suite. 

What is GenW.AI?

GenW.AI supports integration with multiple LLMs and can be deployed on-premises or on private clouds, allowing enterprises to retain control over data and intellectual property. According to Deloitte, the platform integrates with existing enterprise systems and ERPs through pre-built connectors and supports explainable AI use cases alongside traditional application development.

The consulting giant claims it reduces development time and management effort by allowing teams to build applications and agents using visual, low-code tools.

The GenW.AI suite includes four core products. 

GenW App Maker allows rapid development and deployment of enterprise applications. GenW Playground allows users to explore data and create dashboards without writing code. GenW RealmAI provides a low-code environment for working with LLMs and generative AI, including retrieval-augmented generation capabilities. GenW Agent Builder supports the visual creation and management of AI agents, from basic chatbots to multi-agent workflows.

At a press conference ahead of the launch, Sudeepta Veerapaneni, Partner and Chief Innovation Officer, Deloitte India, informed that 30,000 employees of the company’s 45,000-strong India workforce, including 450 leaders, have been trained for deployment.

On-Premise vs Cloud

The company says GenW.AI can be deployed on-premises for enterprise customers, including hyperscalers, that want tighter control over data, or hosted on cloud environments.

Deloitte India partners said the platform will be offered to its 19,000 existing clients in India, along with new customers, including micro, small, and medium enterprises (MSMEs) with revenues of ₹250 crore and above, as well as educational institutions. According to the firm, the pricing is roughly half that of comparable offerings in the market.

“We have the knowledge of what clients are trying to solve, we have domain and sector knowledge or functional knowledge, and we now have the platforms that can help people build applications at a fast pace,” Nitin Kini, Partner and COO, Deloitte South Asia, said. 

He clarified that Deloitte India is neither building infrastructure nor foundational models. “We are not an infra provider. No data centre, no chip. That is not our job. We are also not an LLM provider,” he added. He explained that the company’s focus is on the application layer, where AI tools are integrated into business systems and workflows.

Meanwhile, Jagdish Bhandarkar, Partner and Chief Disruption Officer at Deloitte India, said that the platform can work with different LLMs and has a modular architecture.

The company chose JavaScript as the base language to make development more accessible. “There is nothing easier than JavaScript,” he remarked. “It is taught at the school level, and many modern servers run on Node.js.” The platform is built around drag-and-drop modules, including AI bots, agents, charts, and application builders.

Deloitte India has also built a 500-member dedicated innovation team, which Kini described as unusual for a professional services firm. “Their only job is innovation,” he said, adding that the team does not carry sales targets and focuses solely on building products and platforms that solve real-world client problems.

Threat to SaaS? 

The launch comes at a time when SaaS stocks are under pressure after Anthropic launched 11 plugins for its Claude Cowork platform. Nearly $285 billion in market value was wiped out across software and data services companies in a single day, while the Nasdaq slid more than 350 points on February 3. 

However, the company said GenW.AI is positioned differently from traditional SaaS apps for MSMEs and optimised to run on standard PCs used by these businesses. “Today, MSMEs and startups need these kinds of platforms rather than huge investments. If they need on-premise, we are ready,” Kini added.

While Deloitte India does not aim to replace SaaS tools, it said it enables organisations to build applications suited to their requirements.

Kini said the platform allows business teams to build applications while IT retains governance. “Once upon a time, you told IT what you wanted, and they built and governed it. Here, IT governs, but everybody builds,” he said. The objective, he added, is to free employees from routine tasks.

“When you get people out of the mundane, you unlock their capacity to solve higher-order problems,” Kini said.

At a time when the SaaS ecosystem is under pressure, and enterprises are rethinking software investments, Deloitte India is betting on custom-built, AI-driven applications, signalling that such tools may prevail over a one-size-fits-all approach.