AI agents for small business: 5 that pay for themselves in 90 days.

Most 'AI for business' articles are written by people who've never run a business. They talk about 'leveraging LLMs' and 'deploying intelligent agents'. This one is different. These are five AI agents we've actually built and deployed for MSME clients in India, with real numbers on what they cost to build and what they return.

Agent 1: Invoice reconciliation bot

What it does: Matches purchase invoices against POs and GRNs automatically. Flags discrepancies. Routes matched invoices for payment, discrepant invoices for human review.

Agent 2: Lead follow-up agent

What it does: Monitors your CRM for leads that haven't been touched in 48 hours. Drafts a personalised WhatsApp follow-up message. Routes it through WhatsApp Business API. Logs the response and updates the CRM stage.

Agent 3: 30-day cash flow forecasting agent

What it does: Pulls outstanding invoices, known payment commitments, and historical payment patterns. Generates a 30-day rolling cash forecast every morning. Flags weeks where cash dips below your buffer threshold.

Agent 4: Resume screening agent

What it does: Receives applications via email or WhatsApp. Parses resumes and JD requirements. Scores candidates on defined criteria. Sends top-10 candidates to HR with a structured summary. Sends rejection messages to others.

Agent 5: Operations anomaly detection agent

What it does: Monitors 15–20 operational metrics in real time. Learns what 'normal' looks like for your business. Sends an alert when any metric deviates more than 2 standard deviations from the norm. Includes context: 'Production efficiency dropped 18% on Line 3 — last time this happened it was a mould change.'