India remains critical growth market; startup ecosystem continues to expand: Salesforce

Salesforce continues to see India as a critical growth market as the adoption of artificial intelligence (AI) accelerates. India is one of the most vibrant and dynamic communities in the Salesforce ecosystem, said Arundhati Bhattacharya, President and CEO at Salesforce (South Asia).

The cloud-based software company recently hosted the second edition of TDX Bengaluru, underscoring the growing influence of India's Trailblazer community — a network of developers, administrators, architects, IT leaders, and customer innovators. The community now spans more than 3.9 million members nationwide. The company's ecosystem now includes over 900 partners and 128 active community groups nationwide.

Speaking on the sidelines of the event, Sanket Atal, Managing Director of Operations & Technology at Salesforce India, told Business Today that the country's startup ecosystem is expanding at a rapid pace. "The community has now grown to more than 360, and it continues to expand. Most of these startups are adopters of Salesforce products and are actively building on top of our platform, including agent layers like AgentForce. Many are in the prototyping phase, eager to bring their ideas to market. Some have already listed products on our AppExchange," Atal said, adding that more than a third of these startups are AI-based.

He also noted that India is now the world's second-largest startup ecosystem, adding that Indian startups are fully on par with their global counterparts.

With technology evolving quickly, Christophe Coenraets, Senior Vice President of Trailblazer Relations at Salesforce, emphasised the importance of empowering more developers with hands-on experience. "Last year, we went around the country. We had a program called AI Now Tour that became AgentForce Now Tour, which was essentially full-day hands-on workshops, and also to enable Indian developers with brand new technology. In addition to that, this community is incredible because it kind of self-organises. We have a lot of events that are led by people in the community, and the job of my team and Salesforce in general is to empower these people," he stated.

Currently, autonomous agents write 30 per cent of the code at Salesforce and it expects the figure to rise by up to 50 per cent by the end of this year.

Last year, Salesforce launched its autonomous AI application, Agentforce, which is designed to provide specialised support to employees and customers. The application operates across multiple communication channels and engages in natural language interactions around the clock. It sets up security guardrails and escalates conversations to human employees when required. The company also operates an online learning platform, Trailhead, aimed at upskilling users.