Technology capable of improving standard of living: Salesforce India CEO | Economy & Policy News

Technology alone is capable of improving the standard of living of Indians and improving the level of services at a time when the country catches up with artificial intelligence (AI) technology, said Arundhati Bhattacharya, chief executive officer (CEO) and chairperson, Salesforce India.

Bhattacharya was speaking at the company’s World Tour Essentials event in Mumbai.

“For a country as big as ours, the only way we are going to increase the level of our services, and the standard of living of our people is by using technology. There is no brick and mortar way of getting this done,” she explained.

She elucidated that the emergence of generative AI has prompted companies to adopt the technology given its capabilities.

“I think it’s the emergence of generative AI that has made people feel that we now need to leapfrog very quickly because the capabilities that are now being seen by digitising business, and by using AI, is something that was not seen. People are beginning to understand its power after they have experienced it in the business-to-consumer (B2C) space,” she added.

Bhattacharya also added that though India is ahead in terms of the AI talent base, when it comes to the adoption of generative AI among enterprises, India lags.

“Whether it is the central or the state government, or the quasi-government agencies, they all have different requirements. But they’re a very large segment. And therefore it was important for us at some point in time, to make a concerted effort to see what are the specific requirements of the segment and how do we start addressing them,” Bhattacharya said.

As a larger view, the use cases involving the public sector division at the firm will look at unifying the data across different silos spanning various governmental departments and responsiveness to citizens.

“If we were to think about use cases, probably two big ones include how we unify data across different silos of departments. Second, is on how we can be more responsive to citizens using call centres, automation chatbots, among others,” said Arun Kumar Parameswaran, senior vice president and managing director, Sales & Distribution, Salesforce India.

When it comes to the recently launched public sector division, the company said it would follow due processes of a request for proposal with the government.

The digital lending solution for loan origination would include solutions for personal loans, auto loans, and home loans.

“The lending solution takes into account the Indian requirements such as the new ones integrating into the Indian stack. These requirements are for products which are specifically Indian,” Bhattacharya added.

The company is expecting to create 1.8 million new jobs by 2028, according to an IDC study.

Salesforce has been trying to expand its footprint in India since Bhattacharya took over the mandate. Its India headcount is over 11,000 and counts corporates like Pidilite, Air India, Bajaj Finserv, Hero Fincorp, and several others as its customers.

First Published: Jun 19 2024 | 7:39 PM IST