Tekion: From SaaS to AI-Native Tech Leader

Tekion, previously recognized as a pure-play SaaS company, is transitioning to an AI-first organization, focusing on new products driven by agentic AI.

Faced with the rapid growth of AI, traditional SaaS companies must adapt to remain relevant. Tekion, a SaaS firm serving the automotive sector, has embraced this shift.

Two years ago, the US-based company, with significant operations in India, began its move to become an AI-native entity. This transition involved making critical decisions that are now yielding benefits.

Internally, Tekion’s engineering team is coding more efficiently and developing new products faster. Externally, clients now have a deeper understanding of their customer needs, leading to increased business opportunities.

Founded in 2016 by Vijayan, Tekion has its US headquarters in California and offices in Bengaluru and Chennai in India, employing around 3,000 people globally. The company primarily serves automobile dealers in the United States, Canada, and the United Kingdom.

CEO Jay Vijayan discussed the company’s shift towards becoming an AI-native organization with his team two years prior. Initially, team members were skeptical, noting the success of Tekion’s existing cloud-driven SaaS model. However, Vijayan decided to move forward, emphasizing the importance of investing in the future to avoid disruption.

Tekion’s AI transformation included creating new AI-centric products, with engineers instructed to incorporate an agentic AI element into every new product. This required significant changes to the company’s technology, including coding methods and data leveraging using LLMs. These changes have enabled engineers to focus on delivering high-value solutions by training LLMs on customer data to gain insights into customer needs and potential solutions.

To ensure customer trust and data safety, Tekion has implemented necessary guardrails and obtained ISO/IEC 42001 certification for ethical and transparent AI governance. The company balanced its innovation agenda with careful AI investments and ensured no disruption to existing services for its automobile dealer customers. Vijayan noted that these changes required a shift in mindset across the organization.

Currently, Tekion offers three AI products: an AI agent for services that handles customer queries for car dealers, a Scheduler AI that manages customer calls even when the office is closed, and a Technician AI platform that assists with technical aspects during car servicing.

After two years of adaptation, Tekion is seeing measurable results. Its agentic AI products are yielding benefits both internally and in the market. Vijayan reports a 50% improvement in employee productivity without significant investment increases, contributing to the company’s goal of achieving profitability soon.

The most significant impact has been on the customer side. Tekion’s agentic AI platform enables car dealers to respond to customer queries faster and more efficiently at any time of day. According to Vijayan, AI handles 40-50% of customer calls without human intervention. The Technician AI platform facilitates faster and more accurate vehicle evaluations, with 17.5 million vehicle services booked using the platform in the US in 2025.

Vijayan explained that the technician uses a camera-equipped device to scan the vehicle, sending data to the AI platform, which identifies necessary repairs. Car dealers can also assess the conversion rate of calls into sales and the revenue generated from each repair or service order, allowing for transparent upselling opportunities.

Vijayan believes that AI can help increase the number of cars sold per salesperson each month, a figure that has remained constant at 10 in the US for the past four decades. Tekion plans to launch AI agents for every function, including vehicle insurance sales and post-sales service, all consolidated onto a single interface.

Vijayan concludes that this agentic AI journey has made Tekion more competitive and stronger, setting a bright future for the company as a true AI-native entity.