Salesforce is expanding its India strategy around agentic AI, multilingual customer engagement and local cloud as enterprises accelerate adoption of artificial intelligence across sectors.
The company recently launched Hindi support for Agentforce Voice to expand AI-led customer interactions across India’s non-English-speaking markets. It also announced the upcoming availability of MuleSoft on Hyperforce in India, allowing enterprises to host integrations and AI-powered workflows locally amid rising regulatory focus on data residency and security. India has emerged as one of Salesforce’s fastest-growing markets globally, driven by rapid digital adoption among enterprises, startups and legacy businesses modernising their operations.
Arundhati Bhattacharya, President and CEO, Salesforce South Asia, spoke to Business Today about India’s AI adoption trends, enterprise demand for agentic AI, cloud-related concerns, customer experience automation and Salesforce’s expansion plans in the country.
Edited excerpts from the interview:
BT: India is emerging as one of the fastest-growing markets for Salesforce. What is driving growth in the country?
AB: Basically, the Indian economy itself is driving growth. As the economy expands rapidly, older and legacy institutions want to modernise and become bigger, more efficient and productive. Enterprises that were very small and in the SME segment begin to grow and move into the commercial segment, and then it becomes time for them to adopt new technology.
Of course, we also have a very vibrant startup ecosystem that has no legacy systems at all. Therefore, they are adopting the latest technology to realise their vision. All this together is driving growth opportunities for us.
BT: Which sectors in India are adopting AI the fastest, and how do you see enterprise adoption evolving over the next few years?
AB: Traditionally, in most markets, the BFSI segment is the earliest adopter and the most digitally mature. India is not an exception to that rule. Here also, we see a lot of adoption in BFSI. Apart from BFSI, there is significant adoption in sectors such as retail, automotive, education, healthcare, life sciences and even real estate. In fact, at the World Tour event we are having tomorrow, we will discuss Tata Realty and how they have adopted technology.
We see adoption almost across the board, whether in utilities, manufacturing or energy. I really cannot think of a sector that is falling behind or does not want to adopt technology at a high pace.
Most sectors are very interested in adopting new technology because they acknowledge that this is a moment in technology that has not come in our lifetimes. Everyone is keen to ensure they are getting the best.
BT: Healthcare and pharmaceuticals are also increasingly adopting AI. How do you see technology influencing patient outcomes and healthcare delivery?
AB: I remember once, when my child was very young, I had gone to a paediatrician, and in his waiting room, there was a notice that said only one-third of the diseases mankind is subject to actually have a medicine to cure them. That means two-thirds of diseases do not have any cure or medicine.
To that extent, a lot of innovation still needs to happen in pharmaceuticals to come up with the right solutions for patients. Similarly, healthcare processes need to become far better and less invasive. If you look at robotics and automation, operations that earlier required patients to stay in hospital for 15 days are now getting turned around in three days.
Technology is going to play a very big role here. Hopefully, this will help humanity because there is nothing worse than ill health and not knowing what to do about it, because there simply is no solution available. The use of AI is going to make things far better for human health and help ensure that we live long and healthy lives.
BT: How does India compare with global markets when it comes to enterprise AI adoption?
AB: If I look at it on an individual level, India has very qualified and well-trained people in AI and digital technologies.
From an enterprise perspective, smaller and newer enterprises are adopting AI at a very fast pace. However, I do not see the same pace in many traditional legacy industries. The reason is that they carry the burden of legacy systems. They have established ways of working and large workforces, so they must think not only about technology adoption but also about changing processes and the entire way the organisation works. That can be quite challenging.
The pace in that segment is slower than in the developed world. However, in newly founded companies, the pace is equivalent to anywhere else.
BT: What are the biggest hurdles slowing AI adoption in India today?
AB: There are still many concerns regarding the usage of the cloud, especially in the public sector, where there are questions around security. Personally, I do not think the cloud is insecure. Developed markets depend almost entirely on the cloud. When you move to the cloud, you are relying on organisations whose core business is ensuring security.
If you keep systems on-premises, security becomes your own responsibility, and most companies are not actually in the business of IT. They are in other businesses and cannot devote all their resources to ensuring IT security. To that extent, the argument that on-premises is safer than the cloud is not necessarily true. Both can be equally safe or unsafe because we are talking about logical security, not physical security. What this hesitation has done is hold back many institutions. AI, especially generative AI and now agentic AI, requires enormous computing power and storage. Creating all of that on-premises creates a very high entry barrier because the costs involved are huge.
People need to become more comfortable with cloud adoption in order to adopt these technologies at scale and at the pace required.
BT: How are generative AI and agentic AI changing Salesforce’s strategy and future roadmap?
AB: The way it is changing our outlook is that all the applications we already had, whether sales, service, marketing, commerce or analytics, are now being infused with AI. For instance, if earlier analytics dashboards showed me what needed attention, today AI can give me very clear insights into not only what needs attention but also how to go about addressing it. If I look at a sales dashboard in the morning and there are 10 opportunities, AI can tell me that out of those 10, I should focus on two because they are the most likely to close. AI is infusing every application we already have and adding new capabilities to our portfolio. It is making everything far more intelligent and providing customers with insights that earlier would have been difficult to get within that space of time.
BT: Agentic AI is becoming central to enterprise technology conversations. How do you see it changing business operations and customer engagement?
AB: What does an agent really mean? It means something that has been given agency, meaning it can work independently. Depending on the risk appetite and requirements of an organisation, agents can work in place of people to provide responses or trigger automated workflows.
For example, if a call centre earlier had 10 people and customers had to wait 10 minutes, the organisation may not have been able to afford hiring 100 people. With agents, customers no longer need to wait 10 minutes or even 10 seconds because agents can be spun up very quickly.
If agents are trained to answer questions on a service platform, customers can have a seamless experience. Agents know the types of questions they can answer and know the types of questions they cannot answer because guardrails have been put in place. Those queries are handed over to human agents. It becomes a collaboration between agents and humans to drive better customer satisfaction. Companies benefit because customers are more satisfied, and customers benefit because companies become more responsive.
There are many things today that people simply do not have time to do. For example, if you want to consult a doctor in a particular speciality, you need to research the right doctor, contact the clinic, find a suitable time and coordinate calendars. If you had an agent, that research could be done automatically. You could simply be presented with the best options, choose one, and the appointment could be booked and added to your calendar.
Every one of us can benefit from a better level of service. That level of service cannot happen entirely through manual systems. Agents help improve the quality of life by handling repetitive tasks and enabling faster access to services. Agents will work alongside humans. Humans will not be completely out of the loop. Human oversight will continue, while agents take care of repetitive tasks and release more demand into the system.
BT: How are companies measuring returns on AI investments?
AB: The ROI from AI will not only be quantitative; it will also be qualitative. Take the call centre example again. It may not necessarily mean reducing the number of people employed. Those people may remain within the organisation. However, from the customer’s perspective, a 10-minute wait time may become zero seconds. That improves customer satisfaction. Better customer satisfaction can improve sales, market share, Net Promoter Scores and ultimately the bottom line. Companies, therefore, need to evaluate AI investments across all these factors together.
BT: What role does India play in Salesforce’s long-term growth and investment plans?
AB: The future is very difficult for us to really come up with, but this much I can say: when I came into Salesforce India, we had about 2,500 people. Today we have 17,000-plus. At that time, we were only in four cities. Today we are in seven cities. In some of these cities, we have multiple centres, not only one centre. There is currently a tower coming up in Bengaluru. So yes, we have made quite a bit of investment in India.
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