Salesforce and its ecosystem of customers and partners will drive 3.3 million new jobs and more than $859 billion in new business revenues worldwide by 2022, said Sunil Jose , senior area vice-president and country leader, Salesforce India. In India alone, the largest maker of online customer-management software will create 1.1 million direct and indirect jobs, contributing $17.2 billion in new business revenues to the Indian GDP by 2022, he said in an interview. Excerpts:
What kind of innovation is Salesforce betting on?
Over the last few months, we’ve been talking about how organisations are working towards embracing the Fourth Industrial Revolution. The aspect around AI, machine learning, robotics, 3D printing... we do believe that’s the disruption.
Things like AI have pretty much been prevalent [in the past]. It became more relevant in today’s world because of convergence and the ability to crunch data with high-speed computing available at a fraction of a cost and then Internet being pervasive.
You’d be wearing a Fitbit, smartwatch or a smartphone and all that exudes tonnes of data. The transformation lies in being able to look at that data in real time and drive customer loyalty.
Only about a quarter of your firm’s sales come from outside the Americas. How are you bridging this gap?
India has been a relevant and an important marketplace and that’s not about revenues; it is about the Salesforce economy. There’s a stated goal by the Prime Minister of India Narendra Modi that between 2025 and 2030, India would be the third-largest economy globally.
The second part is probably the young population which we have in this country. The third is the Salesforce economy [study that says] by 2022, Salesforce would probably influence almost 3.3 million jobs, and out of which 1.1 million is out of India and that translates into $859 billion globally [and] about $17 billion in India [IDC Research] and that itself is a huge number.
Also, the growing independent software vendor ecosystem... All these are huge [aspects] of how we look at India delivering for Salesforce’s global growth.
What kind of customers are you eyeing here?
Globally we have 1,50,000 plus customers. We service a huge array of customers in India. To give you an example, right at the top end, we have customers like Godrej, UB Group, tech companies like HCL... At the start-up level, we have [clients such as online furniture retailer]Urban Ladder, micro-financing company out of Bengaluru like Janalakshmi.
What role is AI going to play?
Our platform today has Einstein, which is our AI for Salesforce. The ability to build predictions, journey builders..., all those are well blended into our technology.
So our customers have the ability to go back and look through service predictions. Now, the ability for an organisation (a Salesforce customer) to predict an elevator going wrong in an airport versus a hotel building has far different thinking.
Because an elevator at an airport is probably far more used. The ability for them to keep it running 24/7 and ensure they have a fair amount of predictions versus a hotel is [very different]. That’s the platform technology which we have
Salesforce has a revenue target of $20-$22 billion by 2022. How would India contribute?
I would... look at two or three aspects where Salesforce believes India is probably an area where it’s doubled down its investment. One is the ISV ecosystem and we’re probably the largest B2B [AppExchange] where a whole lot of ISVs from India build their products on our platform and it’s available for global customers.
The second part is the entire trailhead where we believe India is a huge boon from a skills perspective and that’s really encouraging because that is a billion plus people which could be available on Salesforce technology globally on the Salesforce economy.
How do you perceive competition from Oracle, Amazon, Google and Microsoft which are rapidly gaining market share in India?
We are very clearly leaders in the space in which we operate and that’s because of innovation. The 1,50,000 plus customers who use our platform and are on a yearly, subscription basis.
They stay on our platform because of our ability to give them innovative solutions. Using our technology to grow and our ability to partner with them on their newer transformation journey, makes us far more exciting as an organisation.
What are your investment plans for India?
We just chartered on a thousand-plus people in the country. We have a stated goal also to be thousand-plus in Hyderabad by 2020. So those investments are going back in our technology team, our customer support group...
We just started building the Ignite team [in India] which is more about design thinking and consulting. This team collaborates with the global team to start looking at large customers or customers here who are looking at digital transformation.
How do you view Indian software-as-a-service firms as acquisition targets?
It’s extremely interesting if you look at the start-up landscape for India... look at the entire incubation model which every State has.
Avenues exist for large organisations such as ours to invest in some of these areas in India. Salesforce Ventures, based at our headquarters would actively pursue these opportunities.
