salesforce: SaaS major Salesforce India hits $1 billion milestone, expands AI-driven growth

Cloud-based software-as-a-service major Salesforce’s India arm has hit the $1 billion revenue milestone. The company on Tuesday said that it grew 36% in the year ended March 31, 2024, registering a revenue of ₹9,116.3 crore.Salesforce India chief executive officer Arundhati Bhattacharya told ET that the growth has been driven by India’s rapid macroeconomic growth, opportunities opened up by digital transformation and Agentforce (Salesforce’s autonomous AI agent platform), and its growing talent base in the country.

“We believe now we are in the third phase of AI — the first being predictive, the second being generative, and the third being the autonomous agents which can carry out repetitive tasks without human intervention,” said Bhattacharya. “That’s where it goes beyond a copilot.”

There are over 2 million Salesforce developers in India, making it the second-largest community on the Salesforce platform outside of the US. It has about 13,000 employees in India, having added 3,000 over the past year.

“At a time when there has been some amount of cutting back in the IT industry on recruitment, Salesforce India has continued to recruit,” Bhattacharya said.

The company also announced that it is setting up a new Salesforce Tower in Bagmane Tech Park in Mahadevpura, Bengaluru, which will accommodate 3,800 employees and be operational by mid-2026. The tower will have a Salesforce Innovation Centre and spaces for in-person AI training.

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Salesforce has similar towers in nine other cities — San Francisco, New York, Chicago, London, Dublin, Sydney, Tokyo, Atlanta and Indianapolis.“The choice to set up a Tower in India, especially in Bengaluru, reflects an inflection point now with the AI wave,” said Relina Bulchandani, executive vice president, real estate & workplace services, Salesforce, adding that the global CEO was involved in the decision.

“We want to make sure we are an employer of choice going forward with our continued growth and innovation, and for our real estate to reflect our values of equality, sustainability, and accessible spaces for employees.”

The company will pursue LEED Gold sustainability certification for the 12-story tower and is making efforts towards localisation, Bulchandani said. The building will also have focus pods, team collaboration spaces and communal spaces along with the latest hybrid work technologies.

On the demand for Agentforce, Bhattacharya said Proofs of Concept are underway and that more service-oriented sectors are able to identify use cases immediately.

“We are very committed to India. We see it growing quite steadily and strongly,” she said. “Team leaders are now sitting out of India with their teams in other places, with more senior people also getting recruited here.”

Salesforce has offices in Bengaluru, Mumbai, Delhi, Hyderabad, Pune, and Jaipur. It opened its Hyderabad Centre of Excellence in 2016 and expanded it in 2023.

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