Arundhati Bhattacharya, CEO of Salesforce India, discusses the extent to which India Inc. has used generative AI, how AI will drive reskilling and upskilling, and how the India Stack gives the nation a competitive edge.
While Artificial Intelligence (AI), especially generative AI, is developing daily, India Inc. is still “quite a distance” from adopting AI, according to Arundhati Bhattacharya, chairman and CEO of Salesforce India.
Cloud systems help since AI requires massive capacity for data crunching, which is challenging and costly with on-premise systems. However, she claims that even the usage of the cloud is not that widespread in India. Therefore, she believes, “India Inc. will find it very difficult to adopt AI, and generative AI [in particular] as it is even bigger as far as data sets are concerned unless we see more adoption of cloud itself.” “We must have access to the cloud.”
Nevertheless, she continues, India has always been “able to leapfrog into AI and generative AI” since the nation has enough technological awareness, expertise, and proficiency. Bhattacharya claims that because the India Stack is unique, it offers the nation a competitive edge. Numerous characteristics seen in the Indian public goods market, such as DigiLocker, UPI, and Aadhaar, are major facilitators. “We have a huge advantage because we have these public goods that enable digital transformations.” But when it comes to adopting new technologies, businesses must be quick and flexible. According to her, “Companies that are not keeping up are likely to be left out.”
Speaking to the media on June 26 at the Salesforce World Tour Essentials event in Mumbai, Bhattacharya also announced the launch of Salesforce Starter, a CRM platform that will give micro, small, and medium-sized businesses (MSMEs), who she claims “form the backbone of India,” sales, service, and email outreach tools all in one suite. SlackGPT, a generative AI experience that is incorporated into Salesforce’s instant messaging network Slack and integrates Salesforce’s proprietary EinsteinGPT for customer data, has been introduced globally and in India by the company.
She claims that the company’s solutions have received “huge” feedback from the Indian market, mostly as a result of their potential to increase production and efficiency. In crucial areas like education and healthcare, she thinks AI “will power India to its potential and help provide tools we haven’t been able to provide to millions of people to date.” She cites the internet and telephone, which took many years to become widely used, as examples of the rapid uptake of AI. In contrast, ChatGPT attracted 100 million users in just two months.
Bhattacharya made sure to clarify, though, that rather than replacing people in their occupations, AI will only aim to enhance human talents and productivity levels. She also thinks that AI is changing the nature of work, necessitating retraining and upskilling on our part. According to her, businesses must also make sure AI is trained using the proper data sources to ensure it is free of bias. “Over time, issues like bias and data privacy will need to be addressed.”
Salesforce, a California-based company, has “grown quite rapidly in India in the last few years,” according to her. The estimated global revenue for this year is $34.7 billion, and according to Bhattacharya, “we are well on track to deliver that in India.” She stated that growth is “definitely in double digits,” but she would not provide statistics specific to India or APAC. India has one of the most favorable macro environments and is one of the markets where the company is expanding the fastest.
She notes that one of the main factors driving this growth is the effective use of data to assist clients in creating a unique, personalized digital customer experience. Air India, HDFC, Mahindra, Ather, and Tata Cliq are just a few of the Indian enterprises on Salesforce’s client list. Bhattacharya states, “We haven’t started working with the government, but our ambitions will be there because we believe we will be able to contribute.” The company’s personnel in India has increased from 2,200 in 2020 to approximately 9,000 today, spread across six locations.
