As companies around the world move beyond AI experiments and pilot projects toward full-scale deployment, India is rapidly emerging as one of the most important markets for enterprise AI adoption. From banks and airlines to retailers and startups, businesses are increasingly using AI-powered agents to automate customer service, sales operations, commerce, and internal workflows on a large scale.
For Salesforce, India has now become a crucial part of the company’s global growth strategy. The company sees India not only as a major engineering and talent hub but also as one of its fastest-growing enterprise markets, driven by rapid digital transformation, a thriving startup ecosystem, and rising technology investments.
Speaking about India’s growing role, Salesforce Chief Digital Evangelist Vala Afshar said the company’s success is closely tied to India’s growth. Salesforce launched its India operations in 2001 and has expanded from around 2,000 employees to nearly 17,000 employees today.
He highlighted that India’s extraordinary talent pool and fast pace of digital adoption continue to strengthen Salesforce’s long-term commitment to the country. According to him, India already has nearly two million Salesforce developers and close to three million learners using Trailhead, the company’s online learning platform.
Afshar also pointed to the growing influence of India’s startup ecosystem, which now includes over 130 unicorns. Salesforce Ventures continues to actively invest in Indian startups, particularly those focused on artificial intelligence technologies.
According to industry estimates shared during the discussion, the Salesforce ecosystem alone is expected to generate nearly $89 billion in new business revenues in India by 2028.
Currently, customer service and support operations are leading global AI adoption trends because these areas already operate through structured workflows, governance systems, and service-level agreements. Tasks that are repetitive and process-driven are becoming ideal candidates for automation.
Afshar estimated that nearly 60% of current enterprise AI agent adoption is happening in service operations. Sales functions are emerging as another major area where companies are using AI for coaching, forecasting, and customer engagement. Marketing and commerce operations are also rapidly integrating AI technologies.
The scale of AI-driven commerce is growing significantly. During November and December 2025 alone, Salesforce Commerce Cloud reportedly processed nearly $1.3 trillion in global commerce transactions, out of which around $262 billion involved AI agent-driven recommendations or automated customer engagement systems.
Companies are increasingly using AI agents to personalise customer experiences based on purchase history, browsing behaviour, and individual preferences.
When discussing returns on AI investments, Afshar explained that businesses are mainly gaining speed and operational efficiency. Traditional performance metrics such as marketing conversion rates, sales productivity, customer service resolution times, and operational efficiency remain important, but AI is dramatically accelerating how quickly these outcomes are achieved.
He shared an example of how AI agents can now instantly generate customer profiles, financial insights, competitive positioning, previous meeting history, and product recommendations before important meetings — tasks that previously required days or weeks of manual work.
At Salesforce itself, more than 60,000 employees are reportedly using AI agents daily. Instead of manually analysing dashboards and reports, employees increasingly interact with systems capable of instantly synthesising information and generating insights.
Afshar also stressed that AI transformation is not merely a technology shift but a major organisational and cultural transformation. Companies now need to redesign workflows, reskill employees, redeploy talent, and rethink performance metrics.
At Salesforce, nearly 3,000 employees were reportedly reassigned into sales functions after repetitive tasks became automated through AI systems.
According to him, many CEOs are no longer focused only on technology adoption. Instead, they are asking whether their organisational culture can adapt quickly enough to keep pace with rapid technological change.
The company also believes traditional software licensing models are evolving. Businesses are increasingly experimenting with hybrid pricing systems that combine subscriptions, consumption-based pricing, and impact-based pricing models.
More broadly, enterprises are beginning to move away from viewing software purely as productivity tools and are instead treating intelligent AI systems as “digital labour platforms” that actively contribute to business operations.
Afshar added that successful companies continue to prioritise customer outcomes above competition. He said customer experience starts with employee experience, arguing that motivated employees ultimately create better customer interactions.
Interestingly, several companies often viewed as Salesforce competitors — including Microsoft, Google, and Amazon — also remain Salesforce customers and strategic partners, especially in areas such as cloud infrastructure and local data residency solutions.
Finally, Afshar noted that organisational culture remains the biggest challenge for companies adopting AI. Businesses that encourage experimentation, learning, and rapid innovation are more likely to succeed than those that fear failure.
He believes India is uniquely positioned to lead the next wave of enterprise AI adoption because of its strong engineering talent, vibrant startup ecosystem, expanding digital infrastructure, and entrepreneurial energy.
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