Salesforce currently has over 9,000 employees in the country, across its offices in Bengaluru, Mumbai, Delhi, Hyderabad, Pune and Jaipur…reports Asian Lite News
As tech companies go through churning at a global level, enterprise software major Salesforce on Thursday announced to spread its India footprint by expanding the Centre of Excellence (CoE) in Hyderabad.
Opened in 2016, the Hyderabad CoE has firmly established India as a leading talent and global innovation hub for the company. Salesforce currently has over 9,000 employees in the country, across its offices in Bengaluru, Mumbai, Delhi, Hyderabad, Pune and Jaipur.
Arundhati Bhattacharya, CEO and Chairperson for Salesforce India, told IANS that the company would open two floors on a tower that will have 10 business floors and two hospitality floors over a period of time.
“We believe the growth trajectory in India is still intact and we intend to grow fast in the country. When I joined Salesforce in 2020, we had 2,500 employees. Today, we have more than 9,000 workers in India. This is the kind of growth we have seen in the country,” Bhattacharya told IANS.
The product teams at Hyderabad CoE are developing several Cloud-first industry solutions for enterprises of all sizes.
Engineering teams at the centre have helped develop a significant portion of the latest products launched by Salesforce. The CoE’s customer success team provides trusted implementation and technical solution advice to support a growing global customer base.
“We have Health Cloud, we have Financial Services Cloud and we have a Net Zero Cloud. Many of these product teams sit partly in Hyderabad. There are sizable teams in India, like for Data Cloud for instance. We have large teams on the engineering side too which provide the infrastructural support. It’s a collaborative effort,” she elaborated.
Leading Indian companies such as Air India, HDFC Ltd, Tata CliQ and Mahindra Ltd use Salesforce technologies to connect with their customers.
“We have a longstanding relationship with Salesforce and are proud that India, and specifically Hyderabad, has become an integral part of Salesforce’s growth strategy. As India attains global digital leadership, we anticipate that Hyderabad Centre of Excellence will soon become home to many world-class innovations,” said K.T. Rama Rao, Telangana’s minister for industries and information technology.
According to Srinivas Tallapragada, Chief of Engineering, Salesforce, India is a strategic market for the company.
“As we set out on what will be a new exciting era, I look forward to accelerating innovation from India for businesses in India and across the globe,” he said.
The Hyderabad CoE provides world-class innovation to support Salesforce’s research and development programmes.
“India’s fast-growing economy, digital connectivity, and highly-skilled workforce provide a unique opportunity for our country to play an important role in supporting the global acceleration of digital transformation,” said Bhattacharya.
Meanwhile, Salesforce Ventures, the company’s global investment arm, has launched a new $250 million generative artificial intelligence (AI) fund to bolster the startup ecosystem and spark the development of responsible AI.
The fund will initially invest in four companies, including Anthropic, Cohere, Hearth.AI and You.com.
“Salesforce Ventures has been investing in high-potential enterprise technology businesses for more than a decade, and these initial investments from the fund in generative AI companies fit squarely into that strategy,” John Somorjai, EVP Corporate Development and Salesforce Ventures at Salesforce said.
More than two-thirds of leaders will be prioritising generative AI over the next 18 months, but technical and ethical concerns with the technology remain a top concern.
“This fund will accelerate our commitment to fostering the next generation of innovation and we’re excited to see how these companies reinvent how the world works,” he added.
Daniela Amodei, President, Anthropic said that Anthropic and Salesforce share a vision for creating innovative technology that is rooted in safety, and “we’re looking forward to introducing more useful AI services into the world.”