India has emerged as one of the fastest growing markets for global customer relationship management (CRM) technology solutions giant Salesforce and it is estimated that between 2022 and 2028, the incremental revenue gain for its customers in India from the use of AI-powered cloud solutions could be around $88.6 billion.
Salesforce India CEO Arundhati Bhattacharya in an interview with Pinak Ghosh from The Telegraph highlighted the recent initiatives from the Indian arm of the San Francisco-based company, including the launch of its public sector division in India and a digital solution for banks and lenders for faster loan origination based on
borrower information.
What is the thought process behind the launch of the public sector division in India and what role will it play in the growth of the company?
The entire notion of working for the public sector is actually very different with the private sector or with the small companies and SMEs. This is something that requires specialised knowledge.
The public sector and the government have some of the biggest businesses in the country.
The government itself is one of the largest purchasers of goods and services and therefore not being there is also something that did not sit well with me.
Also given the fact that I myself have served the public sector for 40 long years (including as the former chairperson of SBI), not working with them (PSUs) was not something I was pleased about.
We already have a very large presence in the public sector space in the developed world.
We are some of the largest providers of public sector services in the US, all of the EMEA (Europe, Middle East and Africa), in the UK, in Australia and in Japan.
Take the example where the government gives out so many types of subsidies. We could be able to provide the data that in a household where the income is at a certain level, this is the level of subsidy and these are the areas that are still lacking and then those needs could be addressed to ensure that the standard of living of that family goes up. And there are so many more. Today we have over 500-plus solutions for the government and the public sector.
We work in the areas of sales, marketing, e-commerce and analytics.
Today, a customer could be anybody — it could be a person to whom you are selling or marketing stuff, it could be your dealer or supplier, it could be your employees or it could be citizens.
The digital lending solution from Salesforce is expected to unify customer banking and financial data with the aim of faster loan origination at scale. What benefits do you see for the lenders?
Digital lending solutions for India will help by making underwriting of loans better. The risks will be better delineated and the lenders will know how to price the particular risk. It will also give a better opportunity to understand what more can be sold to the customer.
Earlier also this was done. But what generative AI has done is it has enabled us to take in a lot of unstructured data because it understands natural language. So, it has democratised the entire input and output.
What kind of growth has Salesforce seen in India and what are your expectations?
Salesforce has grown very well in India in respect of resources. It (number of employees) was around 2,504 when I entered and today it is 11,000 plus. People-wise the growth has been rapid and the business too has grown very rapidly.
We have been the fastest-growing country amongst all the countries Salesforce is in for the last two years running. We are hoping to maintain this run for the third year.
At this point of time, India is the largest outpost outside of the US, in respect of people. On the business side, we have just announced our entry into the biggest sector which is the public sector. So, I am very optimistic about the growth of our business in India.
